Britannica
Sources used in this answer
When did Johannes Vermeer begin painting scenes of daily life?
Created from Britannica articles
using AI.
AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.
Johannes Vermeer
Girl with a Pearl Earring, oil on canvas by Johannes Vermeer, c. 1665; in the Mauritshuis, The Hague.
Johannes Vermeer began painting scenes of daily life, known as genre paintings, during the second half of the 1650s.1
While he started his career in the early 1650s by focusing on large-scale biblical and mythological subjects, his transition toward the domestic interior scenes for which he is most famous occurred as he moved into this later period of his work. One of his earliest examples of this style is Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window, which is dated to approximately 1657–1659.12