This giclée print offers beautiful color accuracy on a high-quality paper (235 gsm) that is a great option for framing with its smooth, acid free surface. Giclée (French for “to spray”) is a printing process where millions of ink droplets are sprayed onto the paper’s surface creating natural color transitions.

Trivia on Original Piece

1668. Oil on Canvas. 50 x 45 cm. Musee du Louvre, Paris.

Perched on a four-legged stand, the celestial globe was first published by Jodocus Hondius in Amsterdam in 1600. The constellations on the upper half of the globe which face the viewer include the Great Bear on the left, the Dragon and Hercules in the centre, and Lyra on the right.

The book is the second edition of Adriaen Metius's On The Investigation or Observation of the Stars, published in Amsterdam in 1621. Vermeer has reproduced the first two pages of Section III.

Along with The Geographer, it is unusual among Vermeer's paintings in that they both depict a man without a female companion. It is probable that they were pendants, a pair of paintings designed to hang together. They are almost the same size and are of the same scholar in his study. Also, both the celestial and terrestrial globes depicted were produced by the Amsterdam cartographer, Jodocus Hondius. The pictures seem to have been kept together until the late 18th century.

Both pictures were completed within a year with this one being the earliest in 1668. Both works are dated.

It's more recent history is interesting. It was acquired in the 1880s by the Paris-based banker Baron Alphonse de Rothschild. In 1940 the Nazis confiscated it from his son Edouard and Hitler ordered it to be taken to Germany. In 1945 The Astronomer was returned to the Rothschild family and acquired by the Musee du Louvre in 1983.

We will probaly never know.

For me it's a shame The Geographer and The Astronomer aren't kept together, hung side by side for forever and a day.

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