Jan+Vermeer

Little is known about Vermeer's life and there is no record of his actual birth date. He was baptized in Delft, Dutch Republic (now Netherlands) on October 31st, 1632 and he died on December 15th, 1675. It is unclear where and with whom Vermeer apprenticed as a painter and the only sources of information are some registers, a few official documents and comments by other artists. He did not make a living selling his paintings, which would make him into an amateur, but a genius nonetheless. Vermeer created new ways of viewing paintings with his profound and complex compositional techniques that took the viewing process to new levels. He created various optical illusions to make three dimensional objects and space. He painted supreme examples of still-life painting and he used the Camera Obscura and mirrors as aids and tools to help him obtain the result he was after.
 * Jan Vermeer** was a Dutch Baroque painter who specialized in exquisite, domestic interior scenes of middle class life.

One famous artwork by Vermeer is the Young Woman with a Water Jug. In this artwork, Vermeer raises the simplicity of this act to the level of something sacramental. He chose to portray the views of upper and middle class events of life. His color is always true to the optical facts which Vermeer is well known for. Vermeer was not a painter of line, but a painter of light. The magic light of Vermeer is sometimes made the bearer of symbolic significance.