It is said that
Vermeer may have portrayed Antoni van Leeuwenhoek in his paintings
"The Astronomer" and "The Geographer".It is said that
Vermeer may have portrayed Antoni van Leeuwenhoek in his paintings
"The Astronomer" and "The Geographer".
The basis for this speculation is that Van Leeuwenhoek also studied astronomy and resembles the scholar in the paintings. He was also about the same age as the man portrayed when Vermeer painted the worke.
Johannes Vermeer,'The
Geographer',
Stadelsches Kunstinstitut,Frankfurt am Main.Photo:Brauel/Gnamm-Artothek
When Vermeer died, his widow Catharina Bolnes was left with many debts. As a consequence, the aldermen of Delft had to appoint someone to administer Catharinaﾕs affairs.
The chosen curator was the well-known physicist Antoni van Leeuwenhoek
who had been chamberlain of Delft aldermen since 1660, a combination
of warden and bailiff.
In his spare time, Van Leeuwenhoek made improvements to the microscope
through which he discovered the existence of red blood corpuscles,
bacteria and spermatozoa.
His famous contemporary, theDelft medical practitioner Reinier
de Graaf(1641-1673)introduced Van Leeuwenhoek to the Royal Society
in London.
Van Leeuwenhoek kept this society
informed of his microscopic discoveries in more than two hundred
letters, with the result that he was made a fellow of the Royal
Society in 1680.
Van Leeuwenhoek's interest in lenses and Vermeer's use of the
camera obscura is sometimes interpreted as a sign that the two
men knew each other. If that were true, then the man in the paintings
The Astronomer and The Geographer could have been
Van Leeuwenhoek, as he also studied mathematics, navigation and
astronomy.
Van Leeuwenhoek bought the house "Het Gouden Hoofd" (The golden head) in the Hippolytusbuurt in 1654.
The landscape artist Pieter Groenewegen, who had been on good terms with Vermeer's father, lived in this same house in 1633. Van Leeuwenhoek had to borrow five thousand guilders to finance the purchase.
Here, Van Leeuwenhoek established himself as a cloth merchant and set up a drapery on the ground floor.
Van Leeuwenhoek made most of
his discoveries in his study in Het Gouden Hoofd, where he received
many important guests from at home and abroad including the Tsar,
Peter the Great.
The building was later demolished and the house in its place now
dates from the nineteenth century. A plaque in the wall commemorates
his house.
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