''The Astronomer'' (Dutch: ) is a painting finished in about 1668 by the

Dutch Golden Age painter Dutch Golden Age painting is the painting of the Dutch Golden Age, a period in Dutch history roughly spanning the 17th century, during and after the later part of the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) for Dutch independence. The new Dutch Republi ...

Johannes Vermeer Johannes Vermeer ( , ; see below; also known as Jan Vermeer; October 1632 – 15 December 1675) was a Dutch painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. He is considered one of the greatest painters of the Dutch ...

. It is in

oil on canvas Oil painting is a painting method involving the procedure of painting with pigments combined with a drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on canvas, wood panel, or copper for several centuries. ...

with dimensions . Metius astrolabe

Description

Johannes Vermeer - The Geographer - Google Art Project

Portrayals of scientists were a favourite topic in 17th-century Dutch painting and Vermeer's oeuvre includes both this astronomer and the slightly later ''

The Geographer ''The Geographer'' (Dutch: ) is a painting created by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer in 1668–1669, and is now in the collection of the Städel museum in Frankfurt, Germany. It is closely related to Vermeer's ''The Astronomer (painting), The Ast ...

''. Both are believed to portray the same man, possibly

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek ( ; ; 24 October 1632 – 26 August 1723) was a Dutch microbiologist and microscopist in the Golden Age of Dutch art, science and technology. A largely self-taught man in science, he is commonly known as " ...

. A 2017 study indicated that the canvas for the two works came from the same bolt of material, confirming their close relationship. It has been proposed that Vermeer used a

camera obscura A camera obscura (; ) is the natural phenomenon in which the rays of light passing through a aperture, small hole into a dark space form an image where they strike a surface, resulting in an inverted (upside down) and reversed (left to right) ...

as an aid to reconstruct the geometry of the rooms and the objects in his paintings. Both paintings portray the same room and furniture, slightly rearranged. The painting shows an

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. Astronomers observe astronomical objects, such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, galax ...

looking at a globe. The astronomer's profession is shown by the celestial globe (version by

Jodocus Hondius Jodocus Hondius (Latinized version of his Dutch name: ''Joost de Hondt'') (17 October 1563 – 12 February 1612) was a Flemish and Dutch engraver and cartographer. He is sometimes called Jodocus Hondius the Elder to distinguish him from h ...

) and the book on the table, the 1621 edition of

Adriaan Metius Adriaan Adriaanszoon, called Metius, (9 December 1571 – 6 September 1635), was a Dutch geometer and astronomer born in Alkmaar. The name "Metius" comes from the Dutch word ''meten'' ("measuring"), and therefore means something like "measurer" ...

's . Symbolically, the volume is open to Book III, a section advising the astronomer to seek "inspiration from God" and the painting on the wall shows the

Finding of Moses The Finding of Moses, sometimes called "Moses in the Bulrushes", "Moses Saved from the Waters", or other variants, is the story in chapter 2 of the Book of Exodus in the Hebrew Bible of the finding in the River Nile of Moses#Biblical narrative, Mo ...

—Moses may represent knowledge and science ("learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians"). It is notable that a telescope is absent from the scene; Jacob Metius is credited by his brother, Adriaan Metius, as the inventor of the telescope. Art historian Julian Jason Haladyn has suggested that this conveys interiority.

Provenance

The provenance of ''The Astronomer'' can be traced back to 27 April 1713, when it was sold at the Rotterdam sale of an unknown collector (possibly or his father, of Rotterdam) together with ''

''. The presumed buyer was Hendrik Sorgh, whose estate sale held in Amsterdam on 28 March 1720 included both ''The Astronomer'' and ''The Geographer'', which were described as '' ('An Astrologist by Vermeer of Delft, top-notch') and '' ('Similar by ditto, no less'). Between 1881 and 1888 it was sold by the Paris art dealer Léon Gauchez to the banker and art collector Alphonse James de Rothschild, after whose death it was inherited by his son,

Édouard Alphonse James de Rothschild Édouard Alphonse James de Rothschild (24 February 1868 – 30 June 1949), also known as Baron Édouard de Rothschild was an aristocrat, French financier and a member of the prominent Rothschild banking family of France. Early life Born in Pari ...

. In 1940 it was seized from his hotel in Paris by the

Nazi Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...

'' Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg'' after the German invasion of France. A small

swastika The swastika (卐 or 卍, ) is a symbol used in various Eurasian religions and cultures, as well as a few Indigenous peoples of Africa, African and Indigenous peoples of the Americas, American cultures. In the Western world, it is widely rec ...

was stamped on the back in black ink. The painting was returned to the Rothschilds after the war, and was acquired by the French state as giving in payment of inheritance taxes in 1983 and then exhibited at the Louvre since 1983.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Astronomer, The Genre paintings by Johannes Vermeer 1668 paintings Paintings in the Louvre by Dutch artists Books in art Maps in art Astronomy in the Dutch Republic Cartography in the Dutch Republic Early modern Netherlandish cartography Science and technology in the Dutch Republic Oil on canvas paintings Paintings of men

Description

Provenance

See also

References

Further reading

External links