Vermeer's Afterlives

Johannes Vermeer is celebrated today as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age, but for much of the 18th and early 19th centuries his work was virtually forgotten. Literary scholar Ruth Bernard Yeazell draws on her book Vermeer’s Afterlives to recount the story of how French journalist and art critic Théophile Thoré rediscovered Vermeer in the 1860s, introducing his enigmatic interiors, masterful use of light, and intimate subjects to modern audiences. (World Art History Certificate elective, ½ credit)