21 Voldersgracht. The Jan Vermeer School was built on the site of St. Luke's Guildhall in the nineteenth century. It was replaced by a more modern building a century later.
Just six months after his marriage, on 29th December 1653 when he was twenty-one years old, Vermeer presented himself for membership of the guild of St. Luke as a master artist.
Delft artists like craftsmen
and tradespeople belonged to their own guild.
Their patron was the evangelist Luke who, according to tradition,
once painted Mary with the Christ-child. The enrolment fee was
six guilders, of which Vermeer paid one and a half guilders.
His financial position was evidently
so poor that he was not able to pay the whole fee at once. Actually,
he did not pay the remainder until two and a half years later,
on 24th July 1656.
The guild of St. Luke must have been founded in the Middle Ages
but it was first mentioned in documents in 1545. It was the most
important and biggest guild in Delft.
The guild was composed of artists, house painters and decoraters, glass engravers, stained-glass workers, glaziers, potters, embroiderers, carpet weavers, sculptors, engravers, booksellers, printers and art dealers.
It promoted the interests of its members while it also supervising the quality of their work. Only those artists belonging to the guild had the right to sell their works in Delft.
Delft painters, in contrast with glaziers and potters, were not
obliged to submit a masterpiece, but they had to complete their
six years of apprenticeship before enrolling with the guild.
The Board of the guild of St.Luke comprised six members (two potters,
two stained-glass artists and two painters) under the leadership
of a dean who was a member of the council of forty, a municipal
advisory body.
The members of the Board were
appointed for a two-year period. Every year on St.Luke's day (18th October),
the members of the guild chose three new Board members (one from
each vocation). Two candidates were nominated for every vacancy,
from which the mayor and aldermen made their choice before the
end of the year.
Vermeer was a member of the Board twice during his life. He was
chosen in 1662 at the age of thirty, one of the youngest Board
members in the history of the guild. He held the position again
from 1671 to 1673.
Hata Stichting
Foundation