The Art of Painting, also known as The Allegory of Painting, or Painter in his Studio, is a 17th-century oil on canvas painting by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. It is owned by the Austrian Republic and is on display in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
The Art of Painting
The Art of Painting
His signature
Detail of Vermeer's Art of Painting showing the painter at his easel using a maulstick.
Johannes Vermeer was a Dutch Baroque Period painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. He is considered one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age. During his lifetime, he was a moderately successful provincial genre painter, recognized in Delft and The Hague. He produced relatively few paintings, primarily earning his living as an art dealer. He was not wealthy; at his death, his wife was left in debt.
Detail of the painting The Procuress (c. 1656), believed to be a self-portrait by Vermeer
Replica of the St. Luke Guildhouse on Voldersgracht in Delft
A View of Delft after the Explosion of 1654, by Egbert van der Poel
View of Delft (1660–61): "He took a turbulent reality, and made it look like Heaven on earth."