The Astronomer by Johannes Vermeer

The Astronomer by Johannes Vermeer

A hand on the heavens

A young man with long hair, in a loose blue-green robe, half rises from his chair and reaches for a celestial globe, spreading his fingers over it as if to find his place among the constellations. Light from the window at the left falls on the globe, on the side of his face and on the heavy patterned cloth thrown over the table, where an astrolabe and an open book lie. On the back wall hangs a dark picture of the Finding of Moses, and the cupboard behind him carries the date, 1668 — one of the few paintings Vermeer dated.

Real instruments, real books

Vermeer painted objects that can be identified. The globe is a celestial globe by Jodocus Hondius, and the book is Adriaan Metius’s treatise on astronomy and geography. The picture has a companion, “The Geographer”, painted about the same time and now in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt. The Astronomer’s own later history is less peaceful: during the Second World War it was seized from the Rothschild collection in Paris for the museum Hitler planned at Linz, and it was returned after the war.

Where it hangs

The painting has been in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, since 1983. It measures 50.8 by 46.3 centimetres.

About this print

Made from a 5,000-pixel photograph of the original, enough to print sharply at up to about 33 inches on its longest side.

Sources: Musée du Louvre, Paris · Wikidata Q544315 · Wikimedia Commons