Johannes Vermeer en de jezuïeten te Delft

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.