Life
For a long time relatively little was known about Vermeer's life. He seems to have been exclusively devoted to his art, living out his life in the city of Delft. In the 19th century the only sources of information were some registers, a few official documents and comments by other artists; it was for this reason that Thoré Bürger named him "The Sphinx of Delft". John Michael Montias added a lot of details on the family from the city archives of Delft, in his Artists and Artisans in Delft: A Socio-Economic Study of the Seventeenth Century (1982).
Read more about this topic: Johannes Vermeer
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Peasants are a rude lot, and hard: life has hardened their hearts, but they are thick and awkward only in appearance; you have to know them. No one is more sensitive to what gives man the right to call himself a man: good-heartedness, bravery and virile brotherhood.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)
“If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“The Spirit of Place [does not] exert its full influence upon a newcomer until the old inhabitant is dead or absorbed. So America.... The moment the last nuclei of Red [Indian] life break up in America, then the white men will have to reckon with the full force of the demon of the continent.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)