User:Primasz/The Little Street of Vermeer and its Location

The location where Johannes Vermeer painted his Little Street can be traced from the 1832 cadastral map of Delft.

The 1832 Cadastral Map
In 1832 extensive maps of Dutch towns were made for the Land Offices Registry. These maps were more precise than ever before, thus rendering them useful for historical studies, due to the great precision attained in 1832 and by the fact that the old towns were not yet affected by the arrival of the railway, or later on by that of the motorcar. The Delft cadastral map shows the house ‘Mechelen’ on the Market Square, the house where the young Vermeer grew up. It had not yet been demolished at that time. See figure 1 where this house is numbered 972, adjacent to ‘Manhuis Steeg’.

If one now looks from the rear of ‘Mechelen’ to the other side of the Voldersgracht an unusual narrow parcel can be seen opposite; this narrow strip is marked with an arrow between the parcels 1026 and 1029 in figure 1. Such parcels are usually remnants of former gateways or alleys between the houses. In this case the alley is situated exactly where the entrance gate to the Old Pensioners' Home of Delft was found in earlier times. The pensioners’ small houses – often no more than single rooms – were still there in 1832, situated around a court indicated by the numbers 1022 and 1023.

And there is more: Another narrow strip is found on the left-hand side of the parcels 1027 to 1027b. That one can also been seen as a remnant of a former gateway. If that strip is extrapolated to the Voldersgracht (and where else could such an alley have led?) a second gateway emerges at the Voldersgracht, next to the gateway to the Old Pensioners’ Home.

Two gates
Now the situation becomes interesting. The gateway to the Old Pensioners' Home has often been regarded to be the right-hand gate in Vermeer’s picture. The other gate, on the left-hand side, is seen as the entrance to an inner court where a single house was situated. Vermeer depicted the roof of that house in a dull brown colour. This detail of the map is enlarged in figure 2. Lines are drawn from a rear window of Vermeer’s house ‘Mechelen’ to the right-hand gate opposite. It now appears that Vermeer could have seen that gateway in exactly the same position as shown in his painting, see fig. 3:

In figure 3 the left-hand wall of the gateway is fully visible. The right-hand wall can just not be seen because of the gate’s doorpost; but above the gate the side wall of the large house (which coincides with the wall of the alley) can just be seen. Moreover, at the end of the gateway a window is apparent, situated in the little white house that corresponds to the roof above the gate. This house matches exactly with the Pensioner’s house numbered 1027 on the map. The precise view into the open gateway, the explanation of a second gate and the correspondence of the small white house to the cadastral map are all in agreement with this part of the Voldersgracht as the location of Vermeer’s The Little Street.

Further viewpoints
First of all there is the height of the vanishing point in the painting. This point can be derived from the vanishing lines in the painting, such as the line of the gateway gutter and the sides of the benches beside the left-hand gate. The height of this point is in the order of 2.10 to 2.40 meters above street level. Only a few places exist in Delft where such a height is natural for a painter’s viewpoint. These are the houses on the Market Square where half a stair at the back leads to a stone paved cellar (where the back door opens directly onto the water of the gracht behind) and where half a stair leads up to a back parlour. A painter sitting in that parlour is just at the height that corresponds to the viewpoint of Vermeer’s Little Street. The house ‘Mechelen’ on the Market Square is one of these houses.

Moreover, a painter sitting at that spot looks from the windows over the Voldersgracht without seeing the water of the gracht. In that way the appearance is that of a street, not that of a gracht as in The Little Street.

A second point concerns the distance between the painter and his object. Such a distance cannot be derived from the perspective of a painting in general; but if the size of a rectangular detail is known, such as the actual depth of the gateway, it can be calculated. In this particular case the depth can be determined from the 1832 map. By measuring the width of the gateway entrance and the apparent width at the end of the gateway (by the perspective shortening of these lines) it can be derived that the distance between the painter’s eye and the subject was 10.5 to 11 meters (see the Appendix at the end of this article). This is in accordance with the 1832 cadastral map where the actual width of the Voldersgracht at that spot is 11 meters.

A third viewpoint is that Vermeer’s mother owned the house ‘Mechelen’ at the time Vermeer created his picture. Because he had grown up there, Vermeer may have had sentimental ties with the house and its view from the back parlour. But a technical point of view also exists. In those days a painter could not simply buy his paint in tubes; he had to make it himself on the spot. He mixed his pigments with oil on a slab of stone and he had to use the paint immediately. Paint after paint, colour after colour had to be prepared, ready to be applied. Thus a painter must be able to use for a considerable time the place where he painted; in a sense he took his complete studio with him when he painted at a particular location. The house ‘Mechelen’, that was owned by his mother was well suited to this purpose.

Present situation
Vermeer painted his Little Street here in 1657/58. A few years later, in 1661, the plot of the right-hand house was used to build the guildhouse of the St. Lucas Guild, the guild of Delft’s painters and glaziers. Vermeer was one of its members.

This guildhouse was demolished in later times and the plot was used for other buildings. However, in 2005 this plot was cleared again for building a replica of the 1661-guildhouse, see its building site in fig. 4. (ignore the white building in the background).

In present days the new ‘St. Lucas Gilde’ occupies exactly the place of the right-hand house of Vermeer’s Little Street (fig. 5). The Vermeer Centre is located here now.

Summary
The choice of this part of the Voldersgracht as the location of Vermeer’s Little Street is based on a study of the remnants of two gateways on the Cadastral map of Delft of 1832. It is seen that:
 * the view from the back parlour of the house ‘Mechelen’ as shown on the 1832 map corresponds exactly with the layout of Vermeer’s famous painting;
 * the distance between the painter and his object can be calculated and proves to correspond with the actual width of the Voldersgracht at that point;
 * the unusual height of the painter’s eye above street-level in The Little Street is explained;
 * the house ‘Mechelen’ was owned by Vermeer’s mother. Both technical and emotional reasons may have influenced Vermeer’s choice for this location.

Over time many other locations have been suggested but none of them fit both the map of Delft and Vermeer’s picture. The data above, on the other hand, indicate that Vermeer painted his famous picture from the back parlour of his mother’s house looking over the Voldersgracht.

APPENDIX Calculating the distance between painter and object
The distance between and artist and the object of his painting can in general not be derived from the perspective of the painting itself. For that purpose the actual depth of a rectangular object in the painting must be known, such as the depth of a house, the size of a table or the length of a gateway as in Vermeer’s Little Street. And the perspective reduction of the object must be measurable in the painting.

The actual depth of the rectangular object (gateway, table or so) is now called d; the actual distance between the painter’s eye and the plane of the object is called a; see figure A. The width of the object (gate, table or other rectangular figure) as seen in the plane of the picture is called L. At a distance this width is reduced to l by perspective laws. Now:

L/l = (a + d) / a  [1]

In figure B the two lines L and l are shown in perspective, as in a painting or drawing:

L/l = (x + y) / y [2]

From [1] and [2] it follows:

a = y/x. d [3]

but it can also be derived that a = l / (L – l). d [4]

The distance of the viewpoint a can thus readily be derived by measuring the ratio L / l or y/ x in the picture and by knowing the actual size d of a gate, a table or any other rectangular detail.

For the Little Street x = 31 to 32 mm and y = 32 to 34 mm was found (at least in the photographic reproduction that was used; but copies in other scales will give the same results because only the ratio between x and y is of importance). The actual depth of the gateway as seen on the 1832 land registry map was d = 10.3 meters.

From this the distance a of The Little Street can be calculated to be 10.5 to 11 meters. This is in accordance with the width of the Voldersgracht, which is 11 meters at that spot.