'This book is going to revolutionize the way we understand Vermeer' Peter Carey The paintings
of Johannes Vermeer of Delft are some of the most beautiful even sublime in the history of
art. Yet like the life of Vermeer himself they are mysterious and have for centuries defied
explanation. Following new leads and drawing on a mass of historical evidence some of it
freshly uncovered in the archives of Delft and Rotterdam Andrew Graham-Dixon paints a
dramatically new picture of Vermeer revealing many of the painter's hitherto unknown
friendships as well as his previously undetected allegiance to a radical movement driven
underground by persecution. He also vividly evokes the world of the Dutch Republic as it was
in its so-called Golden Age. This was a watery world of fortresses and flood plains taverns
rocked by argument and cities stunned by devastating attacks and explosions: all linked by a
network of canals where a uniquely efficient public transport system operated by horse-drawn
passenger barge enabled people goods and ideas to glide effortlessly from one place to
another. The author sets Vermeer firmly in the context of his time revealing the patterns of
patronage that make sense of his work and also exposing the difficulties posed by his home
life which was dominated by his Jesuit mother-in law and disturbed by the psychotic behaviour
of her only son. In the past Vermeer has been imagined as a remote and enigmatic figure but
he emerges from this new account as a man deeply engaged with his own society: well-travelled
a reader of books a man personally connected to many of the most interesting people of his
time including merchants philosophers preachers bankers and regents as well as his
childhood friend a philanthropic baker named Hendrick van Buyten. Vermeer was also deeply
affected by the struggles that shook his world the Eighty Years War for Dutch independence and
the yet more terrible Thirty Years War which ravaged the neighbouring German lands and
resulted in the deaths of millions. The author shows how he was moved to become a pacifist by
such atrocities and thereafter made many of his closest friends in the ranks of Europe's first
peace movement. A further revelation is that Vermeer's closest collaborator and chief patron
was a woman as were many others in his immediate circle. These are all previously untold
stories. The many piercingly direct descriptions of Vermeer's pictures which are the heart of
the book shed new light on the intentions of the artist. Nearly all of his best loved works
Graham-Dixon shows were originally painted for a single significant location in Delft. In
light of such discoveries every one of Vermeer's major paintings including The Girl with a
Pearl Earring A View of Delft and The Milkmaid are reassessed and their meanings rethought.
As a result the two great unresolved questions about Vermeer - why did he paint his pictures
and what do they mean? - are persuasively answered here for the first time.
