The Dutch Golden Age in a single gallery
This gallery at the Metropolitan Museum brings together the great names of seventeenth-century Dutch painting: Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Pieter de Hooch, Nicolaes Maes, Jan Steen — and five paintings by Johannes Vermeer, more than any other museum in the world holds. By most counts, only about thirty Vermeer paintings have survived the centuries; gathering five of them in a single room is a rarity no other institution can match.
1. The first Vermeer ever to reach America, bought for $800
Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, painted around 1662, was bought in Paris in 1887 by the American collector Henry Gurdon Marquand for around $800 — a modest sum, at a time when Vermeer remained a largely forgotten painter, rediscovered only a few decades earlier by the French critic Théophile Thoré-Bürger. Marquand brought the painting back to the United States: it was the first Vermeer to enter an American public collection, before joining the Metropolitan Museum's holdings with the rest of his bequest.
2. A man at his easel, painted in, then painted out
A Maid Asleep, painted around 1656-1657, shows a young woman dozing at a table, in a room opening onto a hallway. In March 2023, researchers from the Metropolitan Museum presented the results of an X-ray fluorescence analysis at a Rijksmuseum symposium: beneath the painting's final layer, in the space of the hallway, there had originally been a man standing at an easel, one arm raised holding a brush — probably Vermeer himself, depicting himself at work, before he painted over the figure entirely.
This change of mind is invisible in any reproduction of the painting as it hangs today: only the X-ray made it possible to reconstruct.
How much time
Five paintings to compare one by one, in a room that also holds some of the museum's finest Rembrandts — don't limit yourself to Vermeer.
- The five Vermeers — 20 minutes.
- The rest of the gallery (Rembrandt, Hals, de Hooch) — 15 minutes.
Sources and verification
Checked against the official notices of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (metmuseum.org) and cross-checked with Wikipedia EN/FR.
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art — A New Look at Vermeer
- The Art Newspaper — The Met's Vermeer may contain a hidden self-portrait of the artist at work
- ARTnews — New Research Supports Theory of Hidden Vermeer Self-Portrait
- DailyArt Magazine — Young Woman with a Water Pitcher
Displays and room openings can change. Check the Metropolitan Museum of Art website on the day of your visit before following a route.
Listen to the commentary in the gallery
This route gives you a thread to follow. In front of an artwork, CulturAll adds the audio commentary: photograph the work or its label, listen, then ask your questions.
