Johannes Vermeer - Het melkmeisje - Google Art Project

The Delft School is a category of mid-17th-century

Dutch Golden Age painting Dutch Golden Age painting is the painting of the Dutch Golden Age, a period in Dutch history roughly spanning the 17th century, during and after the later part of the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) for Dutch independence. The new Dutch Republ ...

named after its main base, Delft. It is best known for genre painting: images of domestic life, views of households, church interiors, courtyards, squares and the streets of that city. Carel Fabritius and Nicolaes Maes are seen as the originators of these localised specialties in the 1640s that were continued in the 1650s by

Pieter de Hooch Pieter de Hooch (, also spelled "Hoogh" or "Hooghe"; 20 December 1629 (baptized) – 24 March 1684 (buried)) was a Dutch Golden Age painter famous for his genre works of quiet domestic scenes with an open doorway. He was a contemporary of ...

and

Johannes Vermeer Johannes Vermeer ( , , see below; also known as Jan Vermeer; October 1632 – 15 December 1675) was a Dutch Baroque Period painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. During his lifetime, he was a moderately succe ...

. Vermeer is the most famous of these painters today. The architectural interiors of

Gerard Houckgeest Gerard Houckgeest (c. 1600–August 1661) was a Dutch Golden Age painter of architectural scenes and church interiors. Biography Houckgeest is thought to have been born in The Hague, where, according to the RKD, he learned to paint from Ba ...

Emanuel de Witte Emanuel de Witte (1617–1692) was a Dutch perspective painter. In contrast to Pieter Jansz Saenredam, who emphasized architectural accuracy, De Witte was more concerned with the atmosphere of his interiors. Though few in number, de Witte als ...

and Hendrick Cornelisz. van Vliet are also notable contributions. Besides the genres most closely associated with Delft painters, artists in the city continued to produce still life and history paintings, portraits for patrons and the court, and decorative pieces of art that reflect more general tendencies in Dutch art of the period.

References

"The School of Delft" at Essential VermeerVermeer and the Delft School (Metropolitan Museum, March 8, 2001–May 27, 2001)
(same exhibition at the National Gallery, 20 June - 16 Sept 2001)

References

Further reading