The Procuress by Johannes Vermeer Postcard

The Procuress by Johannes Vermeer, oil on canvas 1656, is one of the painter’s earliest known works, depicting a woman in a white bonnet and group of gentlemen in traditional Dutch costume. The richly colored interior, costumes and tablecloth form a coloristic symphony of contrasting warm yellows, vermillion reds and ultramarine blues, foreshadowing the jewel-like colors and painstaking treatment of color and form in the Vermeer’s more mature pictures. On the foreground table sits a white ceramic jug with glazed blue decor known as Delftware, which was made exclusively in Vermeer’s home city of Delft. Johannes (Jan) Vermeer (1632 - 1675) was a Dutch master painter of interior genre scenes whose works were rediscovered in the 19th century. In carefully constructed, geometric compositions drawn in meticulous linear perspective, Vermeer explored the effects of light and color across human figures, objects and textures in sunlit, domestic rooms, building upon the optical discoveries and 3D perspectival depth of Leonardo and the Renaissance. Both a painter and an art dealer, Vermeer slowly produced a few of his painstakingly executed, richly pigmented compositions per year, living entirely within his home city of Delft, eschewing the fame of his near contemporaries Rubens and Rembrandt that he achieved finally in the modern era.