Vermeer: A View of Delft

Johannes Vermeer has always been considered the most elusive of great artists, but this book tracks him down to his home town, taking us back to seventeenth-century Delft in a piece of historical writing that does justice to its now timeless subject. A brilliant blend of scholarly research and more recent findings, A View of Delft sketches a vivid portrait of the Protestant innkeeper's son who married a prosperous Catholic girl and had 15 children of whom 11 survived. It also introduces us to Vermeer's colleagues and fellow-citizens, and charts his celebrity out of Holland, including his effect on Proust and Hitler, among others. Vermeer died in obscurity at the age of forty-three, leaving fewer than forty paintings, many now considered masterpieces.Anthony Bailey is the author of 'Vermeer: A View of Delft' with ISBN 9780701169138 and ISBN 0701169133.