# The Woman Whose Money the Vermeers Lived On > Three Vermeers in this archive were painted in the years Vermeer worked in Maria Thins's household. The Delft wealth register of 1674 assesses her at 26,000 guilders and does not list Vermeer at all. > The Study - 2026-09-25 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/the-woman-whose-money-the-vermeers-lived-on/ ## Key points - Three Vermeers in this archive were painted inside one household, which Maria Thins headed: The Concert, Girl with a Pearl Earring and The Astronomer all fall between the family's documented arrival on the Oude Langendijk and Vermeer's death in December 1675. - The Delft wealth register of 1674 and 1675 assesses Maria Thins on a personal capital of 26,000 guilders and places her 186th in the town. Vermeer does not appear in it at all, because he and his wife did not own a thousand guilders, which was true of about seventy per cent of Delft. - She refused to sign the consent to her daughter's marriage in April 1653, and the refusal is physically in the books: the Delft betrothal entry of 5 April was struck through and written in again after two of Vermeer's acquaintances called on her. She never signed that consent, and she and her sister ratified the marriage only in 1661. - Her capital was not hers to give. A testament of 27 November 1603, made by her mother's sister, tied the estate so that each generation took only the income and the capital passed to the grandchildren, which is how Vermeer's children were provided for before Vermeer was born. - The house was rented, not owned. The family lived in the Papenhoek in property bought by wealthy Delft Catholics for the use of the suppressed Jesuit mission and let out mostly to unmarried or widowed Catholic women. Which of the two corner houses it was is still argued in print. - Vermeer was buried in a grave that belonged to her, and the parish could collect nothing from his estate. Her money is the reason his widow and the eight under-age children he left were not destitute, and she spent four years in court to keep it. ## Three pictures in this archive were painted inside one household ## The tax register assesses her at 26,000 guilders and does not list him ## She would not sign, and the register still shows the refusal ## The house was rented, and from whom is the interesting part ## The picture on the back wall is an identification, not a fact ## Her capital was entailed before Vermeer was born ## The inventory everybody reads cannot show what was hers ## What the documents actually establish, instrument by instrument ## Even the grave was hers ## Why this archive is free to read The Delft tax collector of 1674 walked the Oude Langendijk, stopped at this household, wrote down Maria Tins at 26,000 guilders and did not write down the painter at all. That is the relationship, recorded by a man with no interest in either of them. She commissioned nothing and chose no subject, and without her income, her credit, her testaments and finally her willingness to be a creditor in her own daughter's bankruptcy there is no household on the Oude Langendijk, no studio in the front room, and no thirty-odd surviving paintings. The documents that let anybody write about Vermeer at all are, in their great majority, documents about her money. ## Questions **Who was Maria Thins?** Maria Thins, about 1593 to 1680, was the mother of Catharina Bolnes and therefore Johannes Vermeer's mother-in-law. She came from a Gouda family, separated from her husband Reynier Bolnes and received 15,616 guilders in the settlement in March 1649, and headed the Delft household in which Vermeer lived and worked from at latest 1660 until his death in 1675. **Did Vermeer live in his mother-in-law's house?** He lived in the household she headed, but the house was rented rather than owned. The property lay in the Papenhoek, the Catholic quarter of Delft, in buildings bought by wealthy Catholics to support a suppressed community and let mostly to unmarried or widowed Catholic women. Which of two corner houses it was is still argued between Frans Grijzenhout and the reading followed by the Rijksmuseum. **Did Maria Thins own the Baburen painting seen inside The Concert?** A painting of a procuress pointing with her hand is listed in the division of her marital property of 27 November 1641, and Albert Blankert identified that entry with Dirck van Baburen's Procuress in Boston. Wayne Franits has argued the family owned a replica instead. Boston, the Gardner Museum and the National Gallery in London each describe the relationship differently, and none of them states that she owned the Boston canvas. **How rich was she compared with Vermeer?** The Delft Groot Familiegeld for 1674 and 1675 assesses her on a personal capital of 26,000 guilders and ranks her 186th in the town, within the richest five per cent. Vermeer is not in the register, because he and his wife did not own a thousand guilders, which was also true of roughly seventy per cent of Delft. **What happened to the family after Vermeer died?** Catharina Bolnes petitioned for relief from his debts on 30 April 1676 and Antony van Leeuwenhoek was appointed curator of the estate that September. Maria Thins took on her dead son's debts for 500 guilders and 60 guilders of costs in November 1676, served formal notice on Leeuwenhoek in March 1677 to stop him selling The Art of Painting, with no record surviving of what the sale did, and was awarded the status of preferential creditor by a court on 3 July 1679. ## Sources - [1] Frans Grijzenhout, "Finding Vermeer: Back to the Molenpoort" (April 2024), for the Groot Familiegeld of 1674 to 1675 assessing Maria Thins at 26,000 guilders as number 186 in Delft, for Vermeer's absence from the register because the couple did not own a thousand guilders, for the renting of the house from Catholic owners in the Papenhoek, and for the case for Groot Serpent on the east corner. Cites Nationaal Archief, 3.01.28, inv. no. 15, folio 30. - [2] J. M. Montias, "Vermeer and his Milieu: Conclusion of an Archival Study", Oud Holland 94 (1980), digitised by the RKD, for the separation settlement of 15,616 guilders in March 1649, the powers of attorney of 10 May 1667 and 5 March 1675, the testaments of 18 June 1657 and 27 September 1667, the Hensbeeck testament of 27 November 1603 recited in the act of 2 June 1668, and Vermeer's application to the Gouda magistrates in September 1673. - [3] Stadsarchief Delft, "Johannes Vermeer", the city archive's own presentation of the documents it holds, for the attestation of 4 April 1653 and Maria Thins not signing the consent, for the betrothal entry of 5 April struck through and entered again, for the burial of Vermeer in the grave she owned (Archief 445, inv. 1907, folio 29v), for the niet te halen entry in the poor-levy register, and for the front room of the 1676 inventory holding the easels and palettes. - [4] Paul Begheyn SJ, "Johannes Vermeer en de jezuieten te Delft", Oud Holland 121 (2008), digitised by the RKD, for the move from Gouda at the end of 1641, the company present at the evening visit of 4 April 1653 and the deed drawn up on 5 April, the blessing of the marriage at Schipluiden on 20 April, and the point that marriage made the under-age Vermeer legally competent to trade. - [5] Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, object record for Dirck van Baburen, The Procuress, 1622, accession 50.2721, whose provenance note quotes the entry in the division of marital property of 27 November 1641, cites Blankert's identification and records Wayne Franits's argument that the family owned a replica. - [6] National Gallery, London, entry for Johannes Vermeer, A Young Woman seated at a Virginal, NG2568, stating that a copy of Baburen's Procuress was owned by Vermeer's mother-in-law, in whose house he lived and worked. - [7] Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, collection entry for Vermeer's The Concert, stating that the Procuress hanging on the wall at the right was owned by Vermeer's family, citing Alan Chong in Eye of the Beholder (2003), 149. - [8] Lens on Leeuwenhoek, transcription of the act of 30 September 1676 appointing Antony van Leeuwenhoek curator of the estate of Catharina Bolnes, ORA Delft inv. 171, folio 113. - [9] Lens on Leeuwenhoek, transcription of the settlement of 25 November 1676, ORA Delft inv. 171, folio 125, in which Maria Thins takes over her son Willem's debts and pays 500 guilders and 60 guilders of costs. - [10] Lens on Leeuwenhoek, transcription of the notarial insinuatie of 12 and 13 March 1677, ONA Delft inv. 2211, folios 23 and 23v, in which Maria Thins demands that Leeuwenhoek stop the sale of The Art of Painting and he answers that he had recovered it by litigation for 342 guilders and intended to sell. - [11] Essential Vermeer, transcription of the estate inventory of the last day of February 1676, notary Johannes van Veen, Archief 161, inv. 2224, including its two-part structure and the ten Thins family portraits in the great hall, with Pieter Roelofs's heading of the second section from the Rijksmuseum catalogue of 2023. Tertiary transcription of a primary document; the folios themselves are digitised by the Delft city archive. - [12] Musee du Louvre, collection entry for The Astronomer, RF 1983 28, for the signature and date of 1668 and for the reading of the picture on the rear wall as a Finding of Moses attributed to Peter Lely. - [13] Erik de Visser, "The Puzzle Solved? Notes on the Early Provenance of Vermeer's The Art of Painting", citing Montias by document number throughout, for the transfer of The Art of Painting from Catharina Bolnes to Maria Thins in February 1676, her oath of 11 December 1676, the sentence of 3 July 1679 awarding her preferential creditor status and her procuration of 23 October 1679, and for the reading of her acts as a matriarch securing her grandchildren's future.