Eye of the Beholder: Johannes Vermeer, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, and the Reinvention of Seeing

by Laura J. Snyder

  Citizens of the republic were taxed at a higher rate in order to help the needy. The English ambassador William Temple would later remark that the Dutch “pay the taxes willingly and take as much pleasure and vanity in the public works as in other countries people do in their possessions.” Voluntary contributions were also common, sometimes in the form of coins dropped into a “poor-man’s box” to seal the deal whenever terms were reached in a business transaction. Visitors were suitably impressed by the breadth and effectiveness of the Dutch welfare system. The Dutch Republic took care of its poor, its elderly, and its mentally ill with as much dignity—and order—as possible. The Amsterdam madhouse, for example, featured separate cubicles for each inmate, as well as an interior garden with trees and flowers; an English tourist was prompted to exclaim, “The very Bedlam is so stately that one would take it to be the house of some Lord.” Of course, the orderliness was a form of social control; the mad were kept off the streets, and the poor were pressed into low-cost labor for the quickly growing manufacturers.

  To the rest of the world, the Dutch Republic seemed an industrious and successful little nation, powerful far beyond what its small size and modest people could ever have led an observer to predict. This could not help but excite the envy and, perhaps inevitably, the disdain of men from other, more established global powers: in 1651 the British poet and politician Andrew Marvell would scoff,

  Holland, that scarce deserve the name of land,

  As but th’off-scouring of British sand.…

  This indigested vomit of the sea

  fell to the Dutch by just propriety.

  (Napoleon Bonaparte would later claim for France the dubious honor of having provided the “sand” that created the Netherlands, dismissing the nation as so much “alluvium deposited by some of the principal rivers of my empire.”) And yet, British and French visitors flocked to the Dutch Republic, hoping to pick up goods—and ideas—to bring back home.

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  Delft, located in the province of Holland, about halfway between Rotterdam to the southeast and The Hague to the northwest, was then a lovely town of twenty-one thousand inhabitants, crisscrossed with the canals for which it is named (the Dutch word delf means “canal” or “ditch”; delven means “to dig”). After visiting the city, Samuel Pepys described Delft in 1660 as “a most sweet town, with bridges and a river in every street.” The topography of Delft is moor-like; most of the city lies below sea level, the water being held back by dikes and by a system of sluices draining the costal fens; much of the marshy ground is covered in peat. For centuries inhabitants and visitors had noted mysterious glimmering lights over the former fenlands; these visions were sometimes interpreted as having a mystical or religious origin, an interpretation that led to the building of St. Ursula’s Church (afterward renamed the Nieuwe Kerk) in the fourteenth century. Much later it was realized that this phenomenon was not a kind of ghostly visitation but simply the combustion of moor gasses. The abundant peat would soon be harvested and used to burn fires for the brewing of ale; like the Scottish highlands, the Dutch lowlands would become renowned for the use of peat in producing their fermented beverages.

  Medieval ramparts surrounded the town; with their turrets and moats these walls helped protect Delft during the Eighty Years’ War with Spain. When the war finally ended in 1648, citizens were able to walk along the ramparts and take in the panoramic views. Along the western part of the wall the pedestrian would come upon one of the largest and most imposing city gates in all of the Northern Netherlands: the Sint Jorispoort (St. George’s Gate). The massive towers of this gate also served as prison cells. Behind the Sint Jorispoort lay the city’s “lumber gardens,” where timber shipped from the Baltics was stored and cut. Two other grand city gates, the Schiedam and the Rotterdam, were connected by a bridge, under which low boats often passed into the city. The only gate remaining today, the Oostpoort (East Gate), was near the Oostmolen (East Mill), one of nine grain mills in Delft in the sixteenth century. By the end of the seventeenth, only four mills remained, due to the decline of the brewing industry.

  Many buildings along the canals were constructed in the Middle Ages; a number of these, no longer modern enough for private residences, had been given community roles: the Orphanage (with the Foundling Home and the Madhouse), the Hospital, the Charity House (in two parts, the Poor House and the Leper House), the Workhouse, and the Old Women’s and Old Men’s House on the Voldersgracht, which would soon be used as the cloth-testing hall and then, later, be knocked down so that the new building of the St. Luke’s Guild, the professional organization of the artisans and artists, could take its place.

  The town’s business and social life was dominated by the rectangular Market Square. Given how central the square was to the life of Delft’s citizens, it is surprisingly small; once you are standing in its midst, it is all but impossible to imagine Johannes Vermeer and Antoni Leeuwenhoek going about their daily lives without passing each other frequently. The square is anchored at one end by the Nieuwe Kerk, where both boys were baptized. At the other end of the square is the Stadhuis, the Town Hall, a building designed by the sculptor and architect Hendrik de Keyser (who also designed the stately monument to William the Silent that drew visitors to the Nieuwe Kerk). It was built between 1618 and 1621, constructed around a medieval tower. Here is where the city government met, and where Antoni would one day perform his duties as warden of the Sheriff’s Chamber. Behind the Town Hall and to its right is the Oude Kerk (Old Church), built in the thirteenth century, where both men were buried; the house Antoni would buy when he married lies close by the church, not far from the Town Hall and across the canal from the vismarkt (fish market) and the vleeshal (meat market), where he would sometimes obtain his specimens. On the left side behind the Stadhuis is the Waag, the weighing house, where he would one day serve as the wijnroeier, or wine gauger. Johannes’s father owned an inn, called Mechelen, on one side of the square, across from the Voldersgracht, the street where Johannes was born, and where the new building for the St. Luke’s Guild would later be erected. The opposite side of the square is bounded by the Oude Langendijck, where Johannes would later live with his wife and her mother.

  Throughout the seventeenth century Delft was a “town full of life and business,” as recounted by the Delft chronicler Dirck van Bleyswijck in 1667; it had prospered during the Twelve-Year Truce with Spain between 1609 and 1621, and would remain strong for some decades more. The Dutch East India Company, formed to direct trade between the Dutch Republic and the Far East, had one of its five offices in Delft. From Delfshaven, the nearby port on the Maas River, East India Company ships sailed to all corners of the world. In Delft, the renowned producers of pottery, beer, and woven cloth both created demand throughout the nation and then strove to satisfy it.

  In a country celebrated around the world for its cleanliness, Delft was reputed to be the cleanest town. Throughout the Dutch Republic preachers exhorted their flocks to keep their souls as clean as their houses. Household manuals of the time prescribed different tasks for each day of the week: according to one such pamphlet, every weekday morning the steps, the path leading to the house, and the front hall were to be cleaned; on Mondays and Tuesdays the bedrooms and reception rooms were to be dusted and swept; Wednesdays the entire house was gone over, in a search to eradicate dirt; Thursdays were days for scrubbing and scouring, for which finely ground sand was used; Fridays the kitchen and cellar were cleaned. Visitors were given slippers at the front door to wear in the house so that they would not bring any dirt in from outside.

  In Delft, however, cleanliness was not only next to godliness, it was next to affluence. The beer industry—with around one hundred breweries in Delft at the beginning of the seventeenth century—required clean water. Since the Middle Ages, local ordinances had prohibited the throwing of rubbish and feces into the canals, explicitly to keep the water pure for the breweries. Because of this, beer was the drink most recommended for both adults and
children—it was the least likely to cause intestinal upset or illness (no one yet knew quite why that was; only after the discovery of microorganisms in the water could this question be answered). That was quite different from the situation in London, for example, where vast quantities of human and horse excrement were dumped daily into the Thames, which functioned not only as the city’s sewer but also as its source of drinking water. The streets of Delft were also kept meticulously clean; an English traveler to the Dutch Republic marveled, “The beauty and cleanliness of the streets are so extraordinary that Persons of all ranks do not scruple, but even seem to take pleasure in walking them.” This was in stark contrast to streets in London and the other cities in Europe, where fine ladies dared not walk, lest their gowns and delicate shoes be ruined by the stew of excrement, rotting food, phlegm, vomit, and dishwater overflowing the cobblestones in even the “best” neighborhoods.

  An influx of immigrants from the Southern Netherlands in the 1590s had brought new industries to the north. Tapestry weaving had been established in Delft at the end of the sixteenth century, when weavers from Antwerp—the birthplace of the business—emigrated to Delft. François Spiering was lured to Delft in 1582 by the offer of the old St. Agnes Convent near the East Gate of the city, where he built his factory; another tapestry-weaving concern was located in the St. Anne Convent on the other side of town, near the Hague Gate. With the advent of Protestantism, the former convents and abbeys found new life as factories like these and—with one case that turned calamitous—as munitions depots. Designs for the tapestries were often provided by painters such as Karel van Mander the younger and Hendrik Cornelisz. Vroom.

  Pottery works had also centered in Antwerp until the 1590s, but then moved north to Delft, where they flourished. At first, these factories concentrated on producing square tiles, used for edging the walls of rooms so that the frequent cleaning of the floors would not ruin the whitewash of the walls. Tile makers imitated the multicolored style of the Italian majolica, also known as faience, and the tiles were expensive: about 75–100 guilders ($1,500–$2,000) for one thousand. Soon, trade with China had created demand for the delicate blue-and-white porcelain formed, painted, and fired there. These pieces were quite costly, however, and out of reach of most consumers. Delft pottery works shrewdly began to create decorated porcelain pieces in the blue and white colors and the patterns of the China style; as Bleyswijck rhapsodized, “Dutch Porcelain is nowhere wrought more subtly or delicately than in this town, in which they seem to copy the Chinese to perfection.” The temporary interruption of the flow of porcelain from China between 1650 and 1680 helped fuel the growth of the Delftware industry—so much so that when Chinese porcelain was once again available it had hardly any ill effects on the Delft industry. Consumers were happy to continue buying the Delftware imitations instead of the Chinese originals.

  Once the manufacturers turned to producing the “Delft Blue” style, the price of tiles dropped dramatically, to about twenty-five guilders (three hundred dollars) for one thousand; now it became possible for even workers to cover the walls of their kitchen pantries completely in the tiles for about three weeks’ worth of wages. As the demand for tiles and other pieces of porcelain exploded, the factories multiplied. By 1670 one-quarter of the city’s population depended on the industry. As brewing in Delft slowly declined during the seventeenth century, a number of breweries were turned by their owners into the more lucrative china manufactures, which explains why many of the factories were endowed with names better suited to an inn or a pub: The China Bottle, The Fortune, The Greek A, The Three Bells, The Jug, The Young (and Old) Moor’s Head, The Two Wee Ships, The White Star, The Rose.

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  Johannes’s family was well established in Delft; his father had been born there while his mother had come to Delft from Amsterdam before they married in 1615. However, there had been rough times. Not long after their marriage, Johannes’s father, Reynier, found himself inadvertently embroiled in a perilous plot involving his new father-in-law. Sometime around 1620 his wife’s father, Balthasar, and her grandfather Claes Gerritsz. were imprisoned for playing key roles in a counterfeiting scheme; because the counterfeiting of currency was a capital offense in the Dutch Republic, this was an extremely dire situation. Although the full story is still cloaked in mystery, it seems indisputable that Johannes’s great-grandfather Claes Gerritsz., assisted by his son, Balthasar, had used his skills at metalworking (gained in his training as a clockmaker) to make dies for pressing three-stuiver coins. The two masterminds of the counterfeiting ring were discovered and convicted of having ordered Balthasar to make the dies and then stamping two hundred fake coins. The ringleaders, both members of the aristocracy in the Dutch Republic, were sentenced to execution and were decapitated by sword on August 8, 1620. Balthasar and Claes were briefly imprisoned, but then released without being formally charged.

  By the end of the matter, all members of Johannes’s mother’s immediate family—not only her father and grandfather but also her stepmother, brother, stepbrother, husband, and mother-in-law—had become embroiled in some way: in being questioned, in trying to cover up the involvement of the two men, in signing affidavits about the affair, or in seeking the release of the men from prison. This must have been especially trying for Johannes’s mother, who was pregnant with Johannes’s older sister, Gertruy, during much of the affair (Gertruy was born in March of 1620). We cannot know whether this episode became part of family lore and was still being discussed when Johannes was a young boy, or whether it was never mentioned again.

  Johannes’s father, Reynier, supported his family at first by his trade as a caffa-werker, someone who produced and sold the heavy satin material known as caffa, originally made in Flanders, a type of damask used for upholstery, curtains, and some clothing—including the gleaming, luxurious skirts that would later feature in Vermeer’s paintings. Reynier had served his mandatory four-year apprenticeship in Amsterdam, where he worked from 6 a.m. in the summer and sunrise in the winter until 8 p.m.; in exchange, he received ten stuivers a week plus food and lodging. He most likely met his future wife during his apprenticeship in Amsterdam. Reynier was still referred to as a caffa worker in the records of the Delft city government in 1635, as a witness to a brawl on the ice; he was one of a group that tried to break up a knife fight with their kolven, curved sticks with which the Dutch played a game similar to ice hockey. By this time, however, Reynier was also working as an art dealer. On October 13, 1631, a year before Johannes was born, he registered in the artists’ guild, the Guild of St. Luke, as was required for members of that profession.

  In the guild’s entry book he is recorded as “Reynier Voss or Reynier van den Minne,” two names he had begun to call himself when surnames were becoming more typical (variability in last names was common during this transition period). When he later leased an inn on the north side of the Voldersgracht (thus embarking on a third career as an innkeeper), Reynier named it De Vliegende Vos (The Flying Fox). Most likely he named the inn after himself, and not—as some have claimed—the other way around, since he was already using “Vos” before he leased the inn. Indeed, Reynier Vos was a common combination of names. “Reynier” sounds, in Dutch, like renard, the French word for “fox,” and the compilation of fables the French call “Le Roman de Renard” was famous in Holland as “Reynaerd de Vos.” Perhaps to distinguish himself from all the other Reynier Voses, Johannes’s father had settled on the name “Vermeer” by 1640. It is not known why Reynier chose this last name, though since the word vermeer in Dutch means “to increase,” it was perhaps wishful thinking about his own fortune that suggested the name. More prosaically, Vermeer is a contraction of Van der Meer (from the lake), and was a common surname. One of Reynier’s brothers had already adopted this surname around 1624.

  It is not surprising that Reynier Vermeer would embark on the two careers—art dealing and inn keeping—at once. These often went together. Artists and their prospective customers tende
d to gather in inns, which were frequently places of business transaction as well as conviviality. Adam Pick, the owner of The Big Vat, also traded in paintings. Pick himself was a still-life painter who had studied with Evert van Aelst.

  In 1641, when Johannes was nine years old, his father lost the lease on The Flying Fox, which was several steps away from the building that would later house the St. Luke’s Guild; however, in a move up the ladder of economic and social status, he bought another inn nearby called Mechelen, which was right on the Market Square and therefore in the path of much foot traffic. This was one of the most imposing private buildings on the square, with seven meters of frontage, as opposed to the more usual four to six meters; inside were a lavish six hearths. Reynier purchased it for a hefty 2,700 guilders (the equivalent of $42,000 today), paying 200 down and taking out two loans for the remainder; even so, the yearly repayment was 125 guilders, less than he had been paying for renting The Flying Fox. Above the inn was a building large enough to house Reynier’s family, small as it was with only two children, as well as his growing collection of paintings, most of which were given to him to sell by artists in Delft.

  The Dutch were great consumers of art. They spent much of their earnings on household goods, in part because the prevalent taste—dictated by the country’s Calvinism—was for internal, rather than external, displays of wealth. Citizens were discouraged by their ministers from wearing jewels or building houses that shouted extravagance from the outside. The Calvinist clergy went so far as to exclude bankers from communion by an ordinance of 1581; their wives and children could join communion, but only after a public profession of repugnance at the vocation of their paterfamilias. Many people covered their walls in paintings; even middle-class homes displayed paintings, to the surprise of visitors from other countries. John Evelyn remarked, “Pictures are very common here, there being scarce an ordinary tradesman whose house is not decorated with them.” Aglionby mused, “The Dutch in the midst of their Boggs and ill Air, have their Houses full of Pictures, from the Highest to the Lowest!” Of course, the wealthy took this to greater lengths: in the grandest home in Amsterdam, the Bartolotti house, one bedroom contained twelve paintings—even the room of one of the maids had seven. Closer to home, we know that Delft middle-class workers also sometimes owned numerous paintings. Eight years before Reynier Vermeer began working as an art dealer, when he was merely a thirty-two-year-old caffa worker, an inventory of his household goods shows that he owned nineteen paintings: two portraits of himself and his wife, four pictures of the stadtholder and his family, five paintings on alabaster, one flower still life, one dish of grapes, one landscape, one “story of Lot,” one “sacrifice of Abraham,” one brothel scene, one night scene, and one Italian piper. A study of probate inventories shows that there were about fifty thousand pictures in Delft households in the middle of the seventeenth century, when the population numbered under twenty thousand.