Johannes Vermeer has fascinated a growing number of 21st century viewers with his most intimate depictions of the nature of human existence. The formal perfection of his compositions and the precision of his painting technique, expressing his fantastic narrative ability and accurate realism, have become a quintessential characteristic of the Dutch Golden Age of painting. Nearly 400 years later, Vermeer is still celebrated for his incomparable sense of timelessness, human dignity and unprecedented talent for creating luminosity and purity of color in his scenes.

Although his paintings may seem superficially simple at first, people still identify with the handful of themes from everyday life he covered. He was a highly respected artist of his time, but by the end of the 17th century, Vermeer had mostly faded into obscurity, which is why not much is known about the man he was or how he became in artist. His life as a family father, as an artist and as a man living in the 17th century Delft has been reconstructed with the help of notary documents, but plenty of aspects about his life remain unknown.

The now mythic yet mysterious artist was born in Delft, Netherlands in 1632 and died there in 1675. Extracts from notary records indicate that he was baptized on October 31, but until his marriage to Catharina Bolnes in 1653, little is known about his early life. It seems he spent almost his entire life in Delft and was surrounded by art. During his lifetime, he specialized in self-portraits and in the depiction of women featured in interior domestic scenes. Although not much has been passed down about Vermeer's personality, with whom he might have studied, where he traveled, who he possibly taught, who he painted his works for, and who or what he actually intended to represent, surviving archival documents have helped scholars uncover a better understanding of his family background and social milieu.