The present Doodle observes Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, an seminal Baroque craftsman who is broadly respected among the best Dutch painters ever.
On this day in 1995, an eponymous exhibition opened at Washington D.C’s. National Gallery of Art, including 21 of his 35 existing works.
Johannes Vermeer was brought into the world in Delft, the Netherlands, at the height of the Dutch Golden Age in 1632.
Albeit little is known with regards to Vermeer’s initial life, history specialists estimate from his initial mythological paintings that he originally sought to be a historical painter.
By the 1650s, Vermeer started to paint unobtrusively lit interiors with intricate symbology—a style recognized by customary Dutch themes that turned into his trademark. He caught the ordinary in brilliant and dazzling detail, making masterworks including “The Girl with the Pearl Earring ” (1665) which is at present in plain view at the Mauritshuis gallery in The Hague, the Netherlands.
The imaginative procedures Vermeer utilized are still questionable. Some craftsmanship students of history recommend he followed pictures projected from a camera obscura (an archetype to the visual camera), however with no actual proof to back up such cases, some Vermeer experts stay unconvinced.
On the left, the Doodle artwork references “The Allegory of Painting” (1666-1668) and in the middle, “Woman Writing a Letter, with her Maid” (1670-1671).
In 1979, a X-beam uncovered a secret Cupid in Vermeer’s “Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window” (1657-1659), referred to on the right of the Doodle. Scientists kept on examining the material in 2017, establishing that the Cupid was covered by another painter.
In 2021, a German drive totally reestablished the artwork. These endeavors are only a couple of the many endeavors to demystify Vermeer and a portion of the world’s most treasured pieces of fine art he left behind.
Here’s to a artistic luminary—Johannes Vermeer!