We still do not know who taught him to paint. Nor what his character was like, or, in the absence of self-portraits, even what he looked like. But a recent discovery in the Delft Heritage City Archives does give a little more color to what we know about the life of painter Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) – or rather, about what happened just after his death.
In preparation for an exhibition about Vermeer’s life in Delft in the Museum Prinsenhof Delft, Bas van der Wulp, a member of the city archives, discovered an as yet unknown mention of Vermeer in a burial register of the Oude Kerk, where Vermeer is buried.
It mentions that on Vermeer’s funeral on December 16, 1675, his coffin was carried by no less than fourteen pallbearers, accompanied by the ringing of bells for one while. “This was clearly a luxurious treatment,” says Van der Wulp. “I also read about funerals with twenty pallbearers, but that was the super-elite. Vermeer’s wealthy mother-in-law, Maria Thins, received a little more at her funeral, “two intervals of bells”, “but Johannes Vermeer’s funeral was certainly not standard treatment.”
Dirt poor
This is remarkable, because Vermeer was penniless when he died, three years after the Disaster Year of 1672. The guild that Vermeer chaired for some time probably didn’t pay it, thinks Van der Wulp, because other artists in the guild did not receive such treatment. “But the son of Maria Thins and brother-in-law of Vermeer, Willem Bolnes, who stayed in a ‘improvement home’ due to psychological problems, received exactly the same treatment a year later.” So Maria Thins probably paid for the funeral, says Van der Wulp. It is likely that the mother-in-law only thought to advance Vermeer’s funeral costs to her daughter: “They were probably not yet aware of the financial misery in which Vermeer was in at that time.”
Initially, the Catholic Maria Thins had opposed the marriage banns of Vermeer and her daughter Catherina Bolnes. Probably because Vermeer was a child of Reformed parents and, as the son of an innkeeper, had a completely different social class. “But after a visit from two of Vermeer’s acquaintances, Thins stopped resisting. A notary deed has been drawn up of this, stating that she will not sign the ‘deed of consent’, but that she will end her blockade.” The couple married Catholic in Schipluiden, and gave all their children Catholic names. “We don’t know for sure, but Maria Thins probably stipulated that.”
Third registration
Although the discovery of the fourteen carriers is a detail, it is remarkable that new information about Vermeer’s life is still emerging. Van der Wulp: “Dozens of people have researched his life for a hundred years. All archives have been searched time and time again.” Important is the work done by the American economist John Michael Montias. Between 1975 and 1988 he deciphered urban registers and notarial deeds for his book Vermeer and his environmentin which Van der Wulp was also involved.
The fact that something new has now been discovered is because the archives of the City Archives have been better mapped in the meantime. “At the time, we already knew of two registers in which Vermeer’s grave and funeral are mentioned, so you do not immediately start looking further on that subject.” But there turned out to be a third entry in another burial register. “A lot of different people were involved in a funeral. The sexton, the gravediggers and the church warden himself, they all had their own administration.”
At the site of Vermeer’s grave in the Oude Kerk, only a memorial plaque can now be found. “We know that he is no longer there, the grave was cleared out once, just like all other graves in the Oude Kerk, but we do not know when exactly. I wanted to find out.”
Van der Wulp did not find an answer to that question, but he did: fourteen carriers and once bell ringing for Vermeer.
Read also: ‘New research into ‘The milkmaid’ offers insight into Johannes Vermeer’s working method‘
A version of this article also appeared in the January 19, 2023 newspaper
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