{"id":206132,"date":"2025-10-17T08:29:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T08:29:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/206132\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T08:29:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T08:29:14","slug":"vermeers-girl-with-a-pearl-earring-finally-gets-a-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/206132\/","title":{"rendered":"Vermeer\u2019s Girl with a Pearl Earring finally gets a name"},"content":{"rendered":"

Photography by\u00a0Ilvy Njiokiktjien<\/p>\n

In a car leaving Amsterdam, one of the most engaging of cultural sleuths, the art historian \ufeffAndrew Graham-Dixon,\ufeff is turning in his seat to assure me in a half-whisper that he has made a revelatory \u201csort of double discovery\u201d about \ufeffJohannes Vermeer. \ufeffIt is a conspiratorial moment that might merit a glance up to the rear-view mirror. Is our car to Delft being followed? Will we both make it safely back out of the Netherlands?<\/p>\n

The stakes are reputationally high, because no matter how many tea towels, place\ufeffmats and fridge magnets are printed with Vermeer\u2019s radiant masterpieces, the elusive, meditative quality of his work means the paintings are puzzles still waiting to be solved. Since few clues survive, discovering their original significance has proved a hard cold case to crack.<\/p>\n

In his new book, Vermeer: A Life Lost and Found, Graham-Dixon puts forward a revolutionary theory about the work of an artist whose genius is rarely disputed. Right or wrong, it is a theory that will change the way people look at that famous pearl earring, as well as at the painter\u2019s other luminous portraits of lone women. During six years of research, the author tells me, he has come across two key new findings: \u201cBoth a satisfying explanation of Vermeer\u2019s work and a remarkable group of people I was completely unaware of. They are full of wisdom and kindness.\u201d<\/p>\n

His detective work hinges on the faith of the painter\u2019s close circle of patrons, neighbours and benefactors, all members of a persecuted religious group who can at last step out of the shadows. The new information also allows Graham-Dixon to set out a persuasive case for naming the mystery woman in some of the artist\u2019s best-known portraits and for locating Vermeer\u2019s much-loved work\ufeff The Little Street.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has been emotional at times,\u201d he says. \u201cI kept thinking: \u2018How did I never see the connections?\u2019 I have now met all these wonderful historic characters. Half of them were just hiding behind the furniture: there\u2019s \ufeffBaruch Spinoza,\ufeff almost certainly a friend of Vermeer\u2019s; then the legacy of \ufeffErasmus \ufeffand the influence of the \ufefftheologian Jacobus Arminius;\ufeff not to mention the enlightened arts patron\ufeff \ufeffAdriaen Paets, a director of the Dutch East India Company \ufeffand the most influential Dutchman no one has ever heard of. They have become my heroes. And yet Vermeer himself, of course, is never really in the room. He\u2019s always just left!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Andrew <\/p>\n

Andrew Graham-Dixon inside the Remonstrant church in Delft<\/p>\n

Graham-Dixon, familiar in Britain as a broadcaster and arts pundit, cuts a figure as imposing and dapper now, at \ufeff64, \ufeffas he must once have done at \ufeffWestminster \ufeffschool \ufeffand as an \ufeffEnglish undergraduate at Oxford.\ufeff A veteran communicator and host of several television documentary series, he\u2019s the kind of\u00a0intellectual dynamo who is always \ufeffoccupied with intrigue. By the time we get out of the car in modern-day Delft, we may as well be\u00a0arriving in the artist\u2019s 17th-century city, so total is Graham-Dixon\u2019s command of his tale.<\/p>\n

The great Dutch painter, who lived from \ufeff1632 to 1675,\ufeff is usually assumed to have become a Catholic simply because he married one, but even that is uncertain. Not for nothing has Vermeer been\ufeff called \ufeff\u201cthe Sphinx of Delft\u201d\ufeff. His biography is vague and his name appears in few official records. This, Graham-Dixon thinks, is probably because he was such a good citizen, cropping up only in the register of the Delft artists\u2019 guild. His activities went largely undocumented by the state, unlike the painte\ufeffr Caravaggio, another of Graham-Dixon\u2019s \ufeffsubjects, \ufeffwho can be tracked through his many crimes and misdemeanours.<\/p>\n

But the real puzzle Vermeer poses is not limited to the scant details of his life. Nor to the scarcity of his work \u2013 only \ufeff36\ufeff paintings in all. No, for Graham-Dixon, at least, the deeper mystery lies in those intense studies of young women \u2013 each lit by sun streaming in from the left through a window. Sometimes it\u2019s the same woman, in the same fur-trimmed yellow jacket. \u201cVermeer paints a world so beautiful it moves you to tears. That\u2019s why [his work] had survived, even before the\ufeff French critic Th\u00e9ophile Thor\u00e9\ufeff built up his standing in the 1860s. No one damaged or threw away these pictures and now I can explain why. I can unlock a mystery that has been perceived by all who look at them, but not understood.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is the purpose of these paintings, their true intent, that Graham-Dixon believes he has uncovered and that will \u2013 aptly enough \u2013 illuminate the\u00a0practice of this master of light. The works were, he argues, intended\u00a0as a guide to spiritual life, designed to morally instruct the viewer. To lay out his evidence, he walks me briskly around the key sites: \ufeffDe G\u00e9nestetkerk\ufeff \u2013 a hidden church \u2013 the busy\ufeff Grote Markt square\ufeff and some smart addresses along \ufeffOude Delft\ufeff.<\/p>\n

A garrison town, laced with canals, Delft was still recovering from war in \ufeff1654 when a quarter of\u00a0its streets were flattened by a huge gunpowder explosion.\ufeff This was the infamous \ufeff\u201cThunderclap\u201d that killed Vermeer\u2019s contemporary\ufeff Carel Fabritius, the painter of The\u00a0Goldfinch. \ufeffTo set the scene of that time, Graham-Dixon explains how Holland had only recently separated from \ufeffsouthern Spain and how austere Calvinism was the\u00a0dominant religion.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

There is a hidden church behind this facade on Oude Delft, which Graham-Dixon believes is the location for Vermeer\u2019s painting The Little Street<\/p>\n

That other faiths could worship fairly freely, however, was due to the influence of the liberal merchants who made the new independent state wealthy. But there were growing ruptures among the Calvinists themselves, and these small differences soon became \ufefflarge schisms and accusations of heresy. \u201cThere was \ufeffa continuing struggle for the soul of the republic. The hardline Calvinists felt they had \ufeffGod on their side and should fight on against Catholic Spain,\u201d \ufeffsays Graham-Dixon. \u201cThe merchants argued back that it was neither good for business nor for their souls to contend there was only one way to believe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leading the liberal charge was \ufeffArminius, the young intellectual who gives his name to Arminianism, a principled tradition that stood firmly against damaging doctrinal disputes within the church and beyond it. \u201cIn a beautiful speech,\u201d Graham-Dixon says, as we walk past\u00a0the tilted tower of Delft\u2019s \ufeffOude Kerk, where Vermeer is buried, \ufeff\u201cArminius argued the Dutch should embrace their enemies and make peace with the Catholics and Mennonites, and not persecute Jews. His followers issued a \ufeffremonstrance of protest in 1610, but they were then expelled from the church and went into hiding.\u201d<\/p>\n

This moment of Calvinist repression spawned the \ufeffRemonstrant Brotherhood\ufeff, the covert and avowedly tolerant sect that, Graham-Dixon argues, was to shape Vermeer\u2019s early years. His\u00a0book finds evidence for strong\u00a0links between the painter\u2019s parents and clandestine followers of this liberal tendency. In fact, he is\u00a0convinced he has also established Vermeer as a member of an even more self-effacing splinter group: \ufeffthe Collegiants\ufeff. This faction stood against all formal rituals of faith. Services were unfussy domestic gatherings and religious observance meant following the practical guidelines set down b\ufeffy Christ and by the humble example of Mary Magdalene. \ufeffThey were a direct influence on th\ufeffe Quakers in\u00a0England.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese were radicals who wanted to get rid of churches and priests. They wanted no organisation and no ministry,\u201d says Graham-Dixon. \u201cTheir texts were still written by men, but women had freedom of utterance for the first time. The Collegiants had no beliefs other than those Christian teachings that might save the world, such as \u2018Love thine enemy\u2019 and \u2018Suffer the little children\u2019. They were Vermeer\u2019s people. You didn\u2019t have to believe in \ufeffGod, so a lot of us today are actually Collegiants without knowing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a\ufeff young migrant from Antwerp, Vermeer\u2019s mother, Digna,\ufeff had been taken into the home of wealthy Remonstrants in Amsterdam. When Graham-Dixon discovered that the family she lodged with were later linked directly to Arminius\u2019s descendants by marriage, he had to rewrite the entire opening section of his book, he recalls, rather gleefully.<\/p>\n

But Graham-Dixon was not, he admits, the first to suspect Vermeer of a crucial connection to outlawed non\ufeffconformists. He picked up the idea 20 years ago when he paid a visit to\ufeff the elderly doyen of Dutch art scholarship\ufeff John Michael Montias,\ufeff author of a seminal study, Vermeer and His Milieu. \u201cI was friends with Montias, and talked to him shortly before he died. He told me he wished art historians had pursued a trail he had unearthed, linking Vermeer\u2019s chief patrons to a banned religious group. I took his words as an encouragement to go forward,\u201d Graham-Dixon says, \u201calthough I thought I probably wouldn\u2019t find anything else.\u201d In fact, he has found a series of fresh links in the chain.<\/p>\n

Documents prove that Vermeer\u2019s father, \ufeffReynier, a silk weaver, asked one of Delft\u2019s leading secret Remonstrants, \ufeffJohannes Taurinus,\ufeff to sign the paperwork that allowed him to marry Digna in Amsterdam, instead of going to a Calvinist relative. Graham-Dixon wonders if they also named their son after him. Once married, Vermeer\u2019s parents moved to Delft to run an inn, \ufeff\ufeffthe Flying Fox,\ufeff an establishment that \ufeffstill exists.\ufeff They grew close to \u201ca small nucleus of Remonstrants\u201d living nearby, but chiefly to the \ufeffVan Ruijven\ufeff family. It is \ufeffthese wealthy burghers we must thank for almost all of Vermeer\u2019s most admired work. The artist began painting for them in \ufeffabout 1657 and continued almost exclusively for 13 years. When he did stop, he pretty much gave up painting. It was, Graham-Dixon writes, \u201can arrangement without parallel in the history of art\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Van Ruijven \ufeffmatriarch, Maria de Knu\ufeffijt, held covert Collegiant meetings in her house on Oude Delft\ufeff in front of the hidden Remonstrant church. Research conducted by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam for \ufeffits big 2023 Vermeer exhibition<\/a> supports the idea that it was she, not\ufeff patriarch Pieter van Ruijven, who was the artist\u2019s real patron. It was \ufefftheir daughter, \ufeffMagdalena,\ufeff \ufeffwhom Graham-Dixon contends \ufeffwas the mystery subject of several of Vermeer\u2019s best-known portraits. If this is true, then we all know her face: she is the Girl with \ufeffthe Pearl Earring\ufeff. What\u2019s more, it is the Van Ruijven home, the\u00a0first gallery for Vermeer\u2019s work, that is the real site of the painting\ufeff The Little Street.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The Milkmaid, left, and Woman Holding a Balance, two of Vermeer\u2019s paintings that Graham-Dixon believes were intended as an instructive pair<\/p>\n

A postcard of this picture, with its sludge-green gate and leaning broom, was pinned on my wall for years. The muted colours are lovely, but its lasting appeal is the sense of daily life it conveys. Speculations have come and gone about the exact spot it depicts, but Graham-Dixon walks me confidently down Oude Delft, over a canal bridge. Pausing by double wooden doors, he tells the\u00a0excited students living there that\u00a0this is the exact place: the facade of the former home of the Van Ruijvens is The Little Street. Spookily, there is even a broom resting against the brickwork, although, less atmospherically, the alley is lined with cardboard boxes of empty wine bottles.<\/p>\n

Graham-Dixon says he recalls when things fell into place. Working at his desk in East Sussex, he \u201csuddenly thought, with bell-like clarity: \u2018Vermeer was probably not a Catholic at all. Marrying a Catholic is exactly the thing a true Remonstrant would do\ufeff.\u2019\u201d Remonstrants and Collegiants, after all, saw themselves as partners in a battle for religious tolerance and allowed members of other faiths to set up \u201ccolleges\u201d of their own. Mennonites, Catholics, Dutch Reformed and some Jews became quietly involved, although they also often worshipped in their own churches. \u201cThe penny really dropped,\u201d\ufeff Graham-Dixon says, \u201cwhen I looked at a note of the last big loan of cash ever made to Vermeer and saw it was from Arminius\u2019s grandson. I understood then that all the portraits made for the Van Ruijvens must be devotional paintings, created to aid the worship of those meeting secretly inside that house. Each picture expresses some shade or other of this belief.\u201d<\/p>\n

To illustrate the point, he refers to the celebrated painting known as The Milkmaid: \u201cIt\u2019s the same size as the picture\ufeff Woman Holding a Balance. It\u00a0is the same light, in the same room too. And at the same point [near the top of] the wall, a bare nail\u00a0sticks out. This was the Remonstrant symbol for the crucifixion. I believe these paintings\u00a0depict two sides of religious life; the \u2018charitable\u2019, in which a woman prepares bread and milk for the poor, and the \u2018contemplative\u2019, where a woman weighs her soul on scales. The works\u00a0have never been paired, but\u00a0once you see it, it is there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recognising the portraits as instructive panels explains their mood of gentle concentration, Graham-Dixon believes. \u201cVermeer was not driven by fame nor money, but by some deep feeling or belief, or he could not have painted the way he did.\u201d Once \ufeffthe author had comprehended this, his book was written quickly, in three months.<\/p>\n

Convincing others of his discovery proved tricky. Graham-Dixon puts his cards on the table at the start of his book: \u201cThe account of Vermeer that follows is largely and perhaps disconcertingly new,\u201d he writes. \u201cThis is a side of Vermeer that has been lost from view, although I believe those who have truly loved his work have often sensed its presence.\u201d It does not, he promises, \u201creflect any vigorous striving for originality on my part\ufeff\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The lasting appeal of The Little Street lies in its depiction of everyday life<\/p>\n

This disarming tactic has already won him support from one influential Dutch voice. Paul Abels, an expert\ufeff on religion \ufeffin the Netherlands, backs his theory, judging him \u201cessentially right\u201d and adding: \u201cYou\u2019ve made it clear that Vermeer\u2019s paintings are not simply atmospheric genre pieces, but coded works with a deeply religious meaning. This is totally new.\u201d<\/p>\n

The book contradicts the prevailing narrative that Vermeer converted to Catholicism. It also casts serious doubt on the shared academic assumption that the painter strove to record domestic scenes with a realism that merely mimicked the projections of a camera obscura. So Graham-Dixon is braced for pushback from specialists. He says, though, that the\u00a0most enlightened, even Collegiant, thing he can do is welcome other viewpoints. \u201cWhat I\u00a0am trying to explain, as elegantly as I can,\u201d Graham-Dixon tells me,\u00a0\u201cis\u00a0the way these pictures express those tolerant beliefs, so I\u00a0shouldn\u2019t really proselytise for them. Although, if I ever had to say\u00a0what my beliefs were, I would say I am a Collegiant, any time. I\u00a0didn\u2019t know this beforehand. I have\u00a0been converted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham-Dixon\u2019s compelling description of an event that took place two decades after Vermeer\u2019s death is the proper finale for this detective trail. One day in \ufeff1695,\ufeff an unsuspecting young notary clerk opened the door to a little house on Delft\u2019s central square\ufeff to take an inventory of its contents \ufeffafter the recent death of its owner \u2013 a widower and lowly printer called\ufeff Jacob Dissius.<\/p>\n

Inside, whether the clerk realised it or not, he \u201cstumbled on one of the wonders of the\ufeff 17th-century world: an art collection the likes of which had never been seen before\u201d. All Vermeer\u2019s Van Ruijven paintings\u00a0were there. They had been inherited by \ufeffdaughter Magdalena \u2013 the girl with the pearl earring \u2013 who had married Dissius and moved to the Grote Markt, to the building that still bears the trading name \ufeff\ufeff\u201cthe Golden ABC\u201d. On Magdalena\u2019s early and childless death, Dissius had become custodian of \ufeff20 extraordinary, personal pictures\ufeff \u2013 nearly two thirds of Vermeer\u2019s known output.<\/p>\n

Graham-Dixon thinks the reason these tranquil, mesmerising works were still hanging together is spelled out for us in paint by the Sphinx of Delft\ufeff. Vermeer\u2019s work conveys a\u00a0peaceful Collegiant creed that he interprets as: \u201cHatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can, on the other hand, be destroyed by love.\u201d<\/p>\n

Understanding this has proved the real reward, he says \u2013 far above the thrill of the chase.<\/p>\n

Andrew Graham-Dixon will give a lecture on Vermeer at Friends House, London NW1, on Thursday 23 October (andrewgrahamdixon.com). His book, Vermeer: A Life Lost and Found, is published by Allen Lane (\u00a330). Order a copy at observershop.co.uk for \u00a327. Delivery charges may apply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photography by\u00a0Ilvy Njiokiktjien In a car leaving Amsterdam, one of the most engaging of cultural sleuths, the art…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206133,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-206132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}