Beschreibung:
AbstractThis article offers an addition and partial correction to the recent and pioneering research by John Michael Montias on Johannes Vermeer and his milieu. Isaac van der Mije (1602-1656) from Delft, educated as a painter before he became a Jesuit, may very well have been Vermeer's teacher, in view of his closeness to the artist and his family. There is no hard evidence that Vermeer became a Catholic at the occasion of his marriage to Catharina Bolnes in 1653, but it is known that Roeland de Pottere (1584-1675), the Jesuit who performed the marriage, was a rather strict opponent of mixed marriages. The Jesuits in Delft can be considered to have been the patrons who commissioned Vermeer's large painting Allegory of faith (about 1671-1674). Like Jesuits elsewhere in the Republic they will have selected a local painter for their catechetical didactic paintings. Finally two relatives of Vermeer are presented, who were benefactors of the Jesuits.