Johannes Vermeer Paintings

Three Vermeers are in our ranking of the 100 most famous paintings: Girl with a Pearl Earring at number 12, The Concert at 66 and The Milkmaid at 84.

About Johannes Vermeer

Johannes Vermeer was a Dutch painter, born in Delft around 1632 and dead in 1675, who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. He is considered one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age. In his own lifetime he was a moderately successful provincial genre painter, recognized in Delft and in The Hague rather than across Europe. He produced relatively few paintings and earned his living primarily as an art dealer. He was not wealthy, and at his death his wife was left in debt.

The city is part of the work. Delft was his hometown, and View of Delft is one of three known paintings of Delft by Vermeer, along with The Little Street and the lost House Standing in Delft. It is his only cityscape. According to the art historian Emma Barker, cityscapes across water were popular in the Netherlands at the time and celebrated the city and its trade. Johannes Vermeer's standing was built long after the work was finished, and art history reached its verdict without help from the market he lived in.

Series and periods

Vermeer worked a handful of situations over and over, a woman alone in a room, a head against a plain ground, the street outside the door, so the collection reads best by subject rather than by decade. The dates of the best known canvases sit close together, the street around 1657 to 1658, the cityscape around 1659 to 1661, the girl in the turban around 1665, and the scholar at his charts in 1668 and 1669. What all of them share is the masterful use of light and shadow that Vermeer's paintings are known for, and each group below makes a wall on its own.

• Vermeer, Delft and the street outside: the two surviving Delft pictures, one of them his only cityscape, the other exhibited today at the Rijksmuseum of Amsterdam and signed below the window in the lower left-hand corner, I V MEER. The lost third, House Standing in Delft, is known only by name. Titles here: the view across the water, The Little Street.
• The tronies: depictions of models fancifully dressed that were not intended to be portraits of specific, identifiable subjects. Girl with a Red Hat is one of them, a small painting signed by Vermeer, and its authorship was settled by a recent study carried out by the curators of the National Gallery of Art, a conclusion Dutch experts also support. Titles here: Girl with a Pearl Earring, Girl with a Red Hat, Girl with a Flute.
• A woman alone in a room: the domestic interior scenes of middle-class life the work is built on. One young woman at a window, one table, one letter or one small task, and the light and shadow doing the rest of the composition. Titles here: Woman Holding a Balance, Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, A Lady Writing, The Lacemaker, Young Woman with a Pearl Necklace.
• Music in the house: the same interiors with an instrument in them, a virginal, a guitar, a music lesson in progress, a trio at work in the far corner of the room. Titles here: The Concert, The Music Lesson, A Lady Seated at a Virginal, Young Woman Playing a Guitar.
• The two scholars: The Geographer and The Astronomer are closely related, using the same model in the same dress, and have sometimes been considered a pendant pair. A 2017 study indicated that the canvas for the two works came from the same bolt of material, so the pair can be hung as the pair it probably was. Titles here: The Geographer, The Astronomer.
• Allegory and company: the allegorical and historical side of the collection, with the painter himself at the easel in one of them, and the one tavern scene Vermeer left. Both are larger, busier pictures than the interiors, and both were painted by the same hand in the same town. Titles here: The Art of Painting, The Procuress.

Most famous works

These are the Vermeer titles people ask for most in this collection, ordered by the traffic each one draws and by what actually sells. Each name opens its own page, where you choose the size and decide on a frame. Every one is painted in oil after Vermeer, to order, and no two hands read a brushstroke the same way.

• The Girl with a Pearl Earring: an oil painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter, dated around 1665. It went by various names over the centuries and acquired its present title only towards the end of the 20th century. The work has been in the collection of the Mauritshuis in The Hague since 1902, and it has been the subject of various literary and cinematic treatments, which is a large part of why this is the one Vermeer most people can name
• The Milkmaid: an oil-on-canvas painting of a milkmaid who is in fact a domestic kitchen maid, so the picture is sometimes called The Kitchen Maid instead. It is in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, which regards it as unquestionably one of the museum's finest attractions
• View of Delft: an oil painting of around 1659 to 1661 and his only cityscape, the town seen across the water with the sky taking up most of the canvas. It has been held in the Dutch Royal Cabinet of Paintings at the Mauritshuis in The Hague since that museum was established in 1822, and the art historian Emma Barker reads pictures like it as a celebration of the city and its trade
• The Little Street: painted around 1657 to 1658, the second of the two surviving Delft pictures and the one that looks straight at a brick wall, two doorways and the women working in them. It is on exhibition at the Rijksmuseum of Amsterdam and signed, below the window in the lower left-hand corner, I V MEER
• Girl with a Red Hat: a small painting signed by Vermeer and seen as one of his tronies, models in fancy dress rather than named sitters. Because it is on a recycled wood panel and not on canvas, the attribution was argued over by scholars on both sides for years, until a study by the curators of the National Gallery of Art established the authorship
• The Geographer: created in 1668 and 1669 and now in the collection of the Stadel museum in Frankfurt, in Germany. It is closely related to The Astronomer, using the same model in the same dress, and the two have sometimes been treated as a pendant painting to each other
• The Astronomer: the companion piece, a man in the same gown turning from his globe toward the window. A 2017 study indicated that the canvas for the two works came from the same bolt of material, which is as close as the record gets to proof that they were meant to hang together
• Woman Holding a Balance: a woman weighing at a table in the corner of a shuttered room, one of the domestic interior scenes of middle-class life this work is built on, and one of the most viewed titles on this page
• Woman in Blue Reading a Letter: a young woman standing with a letter open in both hands, the light coming from the window at the left and the wall behind her left almost bare
• A Lady Writing: the same daylight and the same table, with a letter being written rather than read, and the sitter looking up at whoever has just come in
• The Lacemaker: a young woman seen at close range with the bobbins in her fingers, the smallest household task in this group treated as the whole subject of the painting
• Young Woman with a Pearl Necklace: a woman at a mirror tying a necklace, with the pearl again the one bright note in an otherwise quiet interior
• The Concert: three figures making music together in a Delft interior, a harpsichord, a lute and a singer, seen from the far side of a tiled floor
• The Music Lesson: a lesson at the virginal, teacher and pupil seen down the length of the room, with a mirror above the instrument that shows the girl's face and part of the studio
• A Lady Seated at a Virginal: a single figure at the keyboard, hands on the keys and eyes turned out of the painting toward you
• Young Woman Playing a Guitar: a guitar in place of the virginal, a fur-trimmed jacket, and a smile that is rare in these rooms
• The Art of Painting: the allegorical picture of the group, a painter seen from behind at his easel with a model posed in front of him, a large map of the Netherlands on the wall behind, and a curtain pulled aside so you are let into the studio
• The Procuress: an early scene of company, wine and money changing hands, a long way from the still, half-empty rooms Vermeer is known for, and useful on this page as the reminder that the quiet came later
• Girl with a Flute: another small head of a model in fancy dress, a broad hat and a flute held against the shoulder, close in kind to the other small heads on this page

Browse by subject

Vermeer's subjects run through other collections of ours, and each one is a different door into the same painter.

• Portrait paintings: 8,463 works, the genre whose intent is to represent a specific human subject, worked on commission for public and private persons or out of admiration for the sitter, and long kept as a state and family record. Vermeer's heads are the exception in that genre, since the tronies were not intended to be portraits of specific, identifiable subjects.
• Paintings of women: 9,375 canvases, Almost every figure Vermeer painted is a woman, at a letter, at an instrument or at work in a kitchen, so his share of that room is large for a body of work with so few titles in it.
• Landscape paintings: 8,004 titles, the genre in which the main subject is a wide view of natural scenery, mountains, valleys, rivers, trees and forests, with sky almost always in the view and weather often an element of the composition. The two outdoor pictures of Delft belong here, one of them his only cityscape, the other the street by his own door.
• Still life paintings: 2,329 pieces, the picture of mostly inanimate subject matter, the commonplace objects of a table or a studio, either natural or human-made. The jug, the balance, the bowl of fruit and the open window frame are half the composition in most of these interiors.
• Baroque painting: 3,729 paintings, the painting of the Baroque cultural movement, often identified with Absolutism, the Counter Reformation and the Catholic Revival, though it took hold in Protestant and non-absolutist states across Western Europe too. The Dutch Golden Age runs through the same 17th century, and Vermeer's Delft interiors were painted in its second half.
• The 100 most famous paintings of all time: 6 canvases by Vermeer sit on this list, our reading of the best known paintings in art history, Girl with a Pearl Earring, Girl with a Red Hat, The Little Street, View of Delft, The Milkmaid and The Geographer.

The full list of painters we reproduce in oil is on the artist index.

How each reproduction is painted

Nothing here is stock. When you order, an artist paints that title in oil on canvas in the size you picked, layer by layer, and you see a photograph of the finished painting and approve it before it leaves the studio. Traditional oil painting techniques and materials are used, on canvas, the way the Dutch Golden Age original was made. Seven sizes are available and the frame is optional, so the same picture can be a small study by a desk or the one thing on a wall. Shipping is free worldwide and returns stay open for 90 days.

Frequently asked questions

Which Vermeer painting is the most famous?

Girl with a Pearl Earring, an oil painting dated around 1665, is the one people open first here. It has been in the collection of the Mauritshuis in The Hague since 1902 and has been the subject of various literary and cinematic treatments. The Milkmaid and the cityscape of his hometown follow it.

How many paintings did Vermeer make?

He produced relatively few paintings and earned his living primarily as an art dealer rather than at the easel. This collection carries 37 titles, which is why the same rooms, the same jug and the same models keep coming back.

Where are the original Vermeer paintings?

In museums, which is the practical reason hand-painted reproductions exist. The Mauritshuis in The Hague holds Girl with a Pearl Earring and View of Delft, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam holds The Milkmaid and The Little Street, and the Stadel museum in Frankfurt holds The Geographer.

What is a tronie?

A depiction of a model fancifully dressed that was not intended to be a portrait of a specific, identifiable subject. Girl with a Red Hat is read as one of Vermeer's, and its authorship was confirmed by a study from the curators of the National Gallery of Art.

Which Vermeer should I start with?

If you want the face everyone knows, take the girl in the turban. If you want a room with daylight in it, take The Milkmaid or Woman Holding a Balance. If you want the town rather than the house, take the view across the water.

Are these original Johannes Vermeer paintings?

No. Each one is a new painting, made by hand in oil on canvas after Vermeer's composition. It is a reproduction, not a print, and not the original canvas.

What sizes and frames can I order?

Every Vermeer reproduction here comes in seven sizes, with an optional frame. You see a photo of the finished oil painting and approve it before it ships, worldwide shipping is free, and returns stay open for 90 days.