# The Astronomer > Johannes Vermeer - 1668 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/johannes-vermeer/vermeer-the-astronomer/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-24 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Johannes Vermeer - **Date:** 1668 - **Medium:** Oil on canvas - **Dimensions:** 51 x 45 cm. With frame, 91.7 x 84.8 x 6.7 cm. - **Object type:** Painting - **Period:** Dutch, seventeenth century - **Current location:** Musee du Louvre, Paris, Departement des Peintures. Owned by the French State. On display in the Richelieu wing, level 2, room 837. - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A small canvas of 1668 showing a man in a gown turning a celestial globe, painted in Delft, sold and resold through Amsterdam salerooms for a century under four different titles, bought for a Paris collector in 1866 by the critic who invented Vermeer's modern reputation, and acquired by Baron Alphonse de Rothschild before 1888. In 1940 the German authorities seized it from the Rothschild family in Paris for the museum Hitler planned at Linz. A small swastika was stamped on the back. The Allies recovered it in 1945 and it was restituted to Baron Edouard de Rothschild in 1946.It entered the Louvre in 1983, and not by purchase. The French state took it from Guy de Rothschild in settlement of inheritance duties under the dation en paiement, which is why no price for it has ever been published. This is the record in the corpus where the machinery worked: a documented seizure, a documented recovery, a documented return to the family within a year of the war ending, and a transfer to the state four decades later on the family's own terms. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1668** Johannes Vermeer, Delft `[documented]` (origin) Signed and dated 1668. Painted with, or immediately before, The Geographer of 1669; the two canvases were cut from the same bolt of cloth. - **-1713** Unknown; possibly the cabinet of Adriaen Paets, Rotterdam `[unknown]` (gap) No owner is documented for the forty-five years between the painting's date and its first recorded sale. The 1713 Rotterdam sale may have formed part of the cabinet of Adriaen Paets, 1657 to 1712, the patron of Adriaen van der Werff, most of which was sold the previous day, but the catalogue entry is too laconic to establish it. - **1713-1720** H. Sorgh, art dealer, Amsterdam `[documented]` (purchase at auction) Bought at Rotterdam on 27 April 1713 as lot 10, a learned mathematician, with the companion picture as lot 11. Sorgh was a grandson of the painter of that name. His estate sale followed on 28 March 1720, lots 3 and 4. - **1720-1729** G. Looten, Amsterdam `[documented]` (purchase) His estate sale, Amsterdam, 31 March 1729, lot 6, catalogued simply as two Astrologues; the Louvre records that the two canvases cannot be told apart in that entry. - **1729-1778** Jacob Crammer Simonsz., Amsterdam `[documented]` (ownership) Estate sale, Amsterdam, 25 November 1778, lot 18, as a philosopher, with a description matching this canvas; the companion was lot 19. - **1778-1784** J. E. Fizeaux, Amsterdam `[documented]` (ownership) In his possession when the picture was engraved in 1784 at the request of the Paris dealer J.-B. P. Lebrun, who published the plate only in 1792. The engraving omits the signature and the date. - **1784-1785** A. J. Paillet, Paris, with P. Fouquet the younger, Amsterdam `[documented]` (consignment) Entrusted or sold by Fizeaux's widow to Paillet, a Paris dealer and Lebrun's rival, in partnership with Fouquet. Paillet offered the picture to Louis XVI in 1785; nothing came of the purchase and he returned it to Fouquet, who had advanced the outlay. - **-1797** Jan Danser Nijman, Amsterdam `[documented]` (ownership) The drawn copy made by Delfos in 1794, now in the Rijksmuseum, bearing the date 1673, was probably made while the picture was with him. Estate sale, Amsterdam, 16 August 1797, lot 167, with the companion as lot 168. This is the last time the two are sold together. - **1797-1800** J. Gildemeester `[documented]` (ownership) Estate sale, Amsterdam, 11 June 1800, lot 139, a philosopher in solitude, now separated from its companion. Bought by Labouchere, probably a dealer. - **1804-1857** English ownership: possibly a Bryan sale, then J. Gibbons and W. Gibbons `[disputed]` (ownership) A picture that may be this one appears at the Bryan sale, London, 9 May 1804, lot 45a, as an Astronome by Van der Neer, recorded only in a second edition of the catalogue; the Louvre marks the link with a query. J. Gibbons, 1777 to 1851, offered it probably at Bristol on 7 October 1820, lot 31; it was unsold or bought in, since he lent it to an exhibition at Birmingham in 1828 as an Astrologue. The estate sale of W. Gibbons, probably a younger brother, London, 18 June 1857, lot 52, as a philosopher. - **1857-1866** Tate `[disputed]` (ownership) A collector named Tate, with no first name recorded. The Louvre suggests Thomas Moss Tate of Liverpool, two of whose estate sales are known in 1869, rather than Henry Tate, founder of the Tate Gallery. Sold at Christie's, London, 1863, lot 73; the catalogue has not been found but the sale is cited in 1866. - **1866-1881** Leopold Double, Paris `[documented]` (purchase) Bought for Double by Theophile Thore, writing as William Burger, at the end of 1866 or in early January 1867, the same season in which Thore published the catalogue raisonne that recovered Vermeer for the modern world. Double's estate sale, Paris, 30 May 1881, lot 17, as the Astronome. - **1881-1905** Baron Alphonse de Rothschild, Paris `[documented]` (purchase) Bought from the Paris dealer Leon Gauchez, who had acquired it at the Double sale. Recorded in Alphonse de Rothschild's possession by 1888. - **1905-1940** Baron Edouard de Rothschild, Paris `[documented]` (inheritance) Edouard Alphonse James de Rothschild, 1868 to 1949, son of Alphonse. - **1940-1945** German authorities, for the projected Fuehrermuseum at Linz `[documented]` (seizure) Seized in Paris in 1940 for the museum Hitler intended at Linz, as the Louvre's own record states. The Rothschild collections were among the first taken by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, which processed looted French collections through the Jeu de Paume from 1940 to 1944. A small swastika was stamped in black ink on the reverse of the canvas. - **1945-1946** Allied recovery `[documented]` (recovery) Recovered by the Allies in 1945. - **1946-1949** Baron Edouard de Rothschild, Paris `[documented]` (restitution) Restituted to Baron Edouard de Rothschild in 1946, one year after recovery and to the man it had been taken from rather than to his heirs. He died in 1949. - **1949-1983** Guy de Rothschild, Paris `[documented]` (inheritance) Guy de Rothschild, 1909 to 2007, son of Edouard. - **1983-present** The French State, held by the Musee du Louvre `[documented]` (dation en paiement) Acquired from Guy de Rothschild by dation en paiement of transfer duties in 1982 to 1983, that is, in settlement of inheritance liability rather than by purchase. Inventory RF 1983 28. No price exists because no sale took place, and the valuation agreed for the tax has not been published in the sources consulted. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **** , - This painting has not been offered at auction since 1881 and cannot be: it is French state property. It has appeared at public sale at least nine times between 1713 and 1881, at Rotterdam in 1713 and at Amsterdam in 1720, 1729, 1778, 1797 and 1800, possibly at London in 1804, at Bristol in 1820, at London in 1857 and 1863 and at Paris in 1881. NOT ONE PRICE FOR ANY OF THOSE SALES APPEARS IN THE HOLDING MUSEUM'S OWN PROVENANCE, and none is asserted here. The 1983 transfer to the Louvre was a dation en paiement of inheritance duties and produced no price at all. Any figure quoted anywhere as the value of this picture is an estimate by a third party and not a transaction. ## Exhibitions - Exhibition (lent by J. Gibbons, as an Astrologue), Birmingham, 1828 - Anciens et nouveaux: works acquired by the State or with its participation, 1981-1985, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, 1985-1986 - Vermeer's Astronomer and Geographer, reunited after two centuries, Musee du Louvre, Paris, and Staedel Museum, Frankfurt, 1997 - Rembrandt and the Dutch Golden Age, Szepmuveszeti Muzeum, Budapest, 2014-2015 - Genre painting: scenes of daily life, National Art Center, Tokyo, and Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, 2015 - Class Distinctions: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2015-2016 - Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting, Musee du Louvre, Paris; National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin; National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2017 - Louvre Abu Dhabi, fifth hang, Louvre Abu Dhabi, 2021-2023 - Lire le ciel: reading the sky under the stars in the Mediterranean, Mucem, Marseille, 2025-2026 ## Open questions - Is the swastika stamp on the reverse still present, and has it ever been published in a technical report or photographed? The mark is repeated throughout the general literature; no primary record of it was reached for this entry. - What ERR inventory code was assigned to the painting in 1940, and does the Jeu de Paume card for it survive? The ERR databases were not reachable for this entry. - At what value was the picture accepted in settlement of the transfer duties in 1982-1983? The Louvre publishes the mechanism and not the figure, and no published valuation was found. - Which sale is the 1804 Bryan lot in London, catalogued as an Astronome by Van der Neer and recorded only in a second edition of the catalogue? The Louvre marks the link with a query. - Which Tate owned it before the 1863 Christie's sale? The Louvre leans to Thomas Moss Tate of Liverpool over Henry Tate, and the 1863 catalogue has not been found. - Who is the sitter? The Leeuwenhoek identification is stated without proof by the holding museum itself, and rests on a man who was not yet publicly known when the picture was painted. ## Sources - [1] Musee du Louvre, collections database, entry for L'Astronome, RF 1983 28, Departement des Peintures, permalink ark:/53355/cl010064324, last updated 2 December 2025. The museum's own record: signature and its retouching, dimensions with and without frame, the 1983 De Boer frame, the identification of the Hondius globe and the Metius manual, the Lely Moses on the rear wall, the Leeuwenhoek identification and its lack of proof, the complete provenance from the Rotterdam sale of 27 April 1713 to the dation of 1982-1983, the mode of acquisition, the exhibition history and the bibliography. PRIMARY. - [2] Wikipedia, 'The Astronomer (Vermeer)', TERTIARY, used only for the swastika stamped in black ink on the reverse after the 1940 seizure and for the 2017 canvas analysis showing that this picture and The Geographer came from the same bolt. Flagged for replacement with the Louvre's 2017 exhibition catalogue and an archival record of the mark. - [3] Wikipedia, 'Johannes Vermeer', TERTIARY, used only for the artist dossier: the baptism and death dates, the father's trades, the 1653 marriage and conversion, Maria Thins and Leonaert Bramer, the Guild of Saint Luke and the four terms as headman, the fifteen children, the size of the accepted corpus, the rampjaar and the widow's account of his death, and Thore-Burger's 1866 catalogue. Flagged for replacement with John Michael Montias, Vermeer and His Milieu. - [4] Staedel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, online collection entry for The Geographer: 1669, oil on canvas, 51.6 x 45.4 cm, inventory 1149, signed and dated upper right on the wall I.Ver-Meer MDCLXVIIII, acquired in 1885, and identified by the museum as the counterpart to the Louvre's Astronomer. PRIMARY for the companion picture. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.