The Visit to the Tomb

An early history painting, now lost, recorded as “Een graft besoeckende van der Meer” (a grave-visitation by Van der Meer) in the death inventory of the Amsterdam art dealer Johannes de Renialme, drawn up on 27 June 1657. It was valued at 20 guilders, a fair sum for a painter then only twenty-four. The subject is disputed: most read it as a New Testament scene of the Three Marys at Christ’s tomb, though some have proposed a contemporary view of the much-visited tomb of William of Orange in Delft’s Nieuwe Kerk. As a history painting it would belong beside the surviving Diana and Her Companions and Christ in the House of Martha and Mary from Vermeer’s earliest phase.