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Who were the main buyers of Johannes Vermeer’s paintings during his lifetime?
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Johannes Vermeer
Girl with a Pearl Earring, oil on canvas by Johannes Vermeer, c. 1665; in the Mauritshuis, The Hague.
While no specific records of commissions for Johannes Vermeer’s paintings are known to exist, it appears that he sold his work primarily to a small, localized group of patrons in his native city of Delft.1
Because his creative output was relatively small and his work was largely acquired by these local collectors, Vermeer’s fame remained limited during his lifetime. Evidence of this concentrated patronage is found in the fact that, more than two decades after the artist's death, a significant collection of his work—no fewer than 21 paintings—was sold from the estate of a Delft collector named Jacob Dissius.21