Hendrick van Buyten (1632 - July 1701) was a baker in

Delft Delft () is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. It is located between Rotterdam, to the southeast, and The Hague, to the northwest. Together with them, it is part of both the Rotterdam–The Hague metropolita ...

. He is famous because of his connection to

Johannes Vermeer Johannes Vermeer ( , , see below; also known as Jan Vermeer; October 1632 – 15 December 1675) was a Dutch Baroque Period painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. During his lifetime, he was a moderately succe ...

. In August 1663 he owned a painting by Vermeer when he was visited by

Balthasar de Monconys Balthasar de Monconys (1611–1665) was a French traveller, diplomat, physicist and magistrate, who left a diary, which was published by his son as ''Journal des voyages de Monsieur de Monconys, Conseiller du Roy en ses Conseils d’Estat & Privé ...

. Van Buyten told the diplomat, accompanied by two friends, he had paid 600 guilder for the painting. Monconys opined that he would have thought he had overpaid for it had he bought it for sixty guilders. In a disposition of January 1676, a month and a half after Vermeer's death, Catharina Bolnes appeared before a notary to acknowledge that she had ''sold and transferred'' two paintings by her late husband to Van Buyten. Catharina further declared that she had been paid 617

guilder Guilder is the English translation of the Dutch and German ''gulden'', originally shortened from Middle High German ''guldin pfenninc'' " gold penny". This was the term that became current in the southern and western parts of the Holy Roman Emp ...

s for the two paintings, which she owed Van Buyten for

bread Bread is a staple food prepared from a dough of flour (usually wheat) and water, usually by baking. Throughout recorded history and around the world, it has been an important part of many cultures' diet. It is one of the oldest human-made f ...

delivered. He would return the paintings, ''a person playing on a cittern'' and another ''representing two persons one of whom is sitting writing a letter'' if she paid all her

debt Debt is an obligation that requires one party, the debtor, to pay money or other agreed-upon value to another party, the creditor. Debt is a deferred payment, or series of payments, which differentiates it from an immediate purchase. The ...

s. Catharina had persistently urged him to. She had over twelve years to refund the main part of the debt at fifty guilders per year, and she did not even have to pay

interest In finance and economics, interest is payment from a borrower or deposit-taking financial institution to a lender or depositor of an amount above repayment of the principal sum (that is, the amount borrowed), at a particular rate. It is distin ...

. Van Buyten must have delivered a great deal of bread to accumulate a total credit of over 726 guilders.J.M. Montias, p. 217. Van Buyten was married to Machtelt van Asson and in 1683 to Adriana Waelpot. If he earned more than 600 guilders a year, he belonged to the richest people in Holland, where a guilder a day was seen as a very good salary.

Sources

External links

* http://www.essentialvermeer.com/clients_patrons/vermeer's_clients_and_patrons.html#Buyten
Montias in Google Books
{{DEFAULTSORT:Buyten, Hendrick Van 1632 births 1701 deaths People from Delft 17th-century Dutch people Bakers