Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675) was a Dutch Golden Age painter celebrated as the 'Master of Light.' Working in Delft, he produced only some thirty-six surviving paintings, most of them tranquil interior scenes rendered with a luminous, almost scientific realism.

Moderately successful in his lifetime and long overlooked thereafter, Vermeer was widely rediscovered in the nineteenth century and is now regarded as one of the supreme painters of European art, his quiet domestic worlds among the most beloved images ever made.