In the fall of 1632, two great minds of Western civilization, Jan Vermeer, the painter, and Antoine Van Leeuwenhoek, the father of microbiology, were born in the Dutch city of Delft. Because the men, as exact contemporaries and prominent local intellectuals, almost certainly knew one another (Van Leeuwenhoek was in fact the executor of Vermeer’s estate when he died) there has been speculation for years that Van Leeuwenhoek was the model for two of Vermeer’s paintings, The Geographer
and The Astronomer.
Unfortunately, there is no written documentation for this claim; until now the idea has rested on the fact that the men probably knew one another, Van Leeuwenhoek was a man of science, and the model bears a strong resemblance to the older, slightly more jowely, Van Leeuwenhoek depicted in a known portrait of him by another painter, Jan Verkolje.
Van Leeuwenhoek
The idea of Van Leeuwenhoek as the model for these paintings, however, raises some interesting questions. First, what were these paintings for? They are not, in the strict sense, portraits because they are not about the sitter (note how the faces are either mostly or entirely in profile), but rather, somewhat abstractly, about the idea of science as embodied by the disciplines of astronomy and geography. As such the paintings are essentially genre pieces.
And this raises another question: Why would the wealthy and prominent Van Leeuwenhoek be willing to serve a model for a pair of genre paintings depicting two sciences, astronomy and geography, for which he was not primarily known? If he were to commision Vermeer to render him in paint and undergo the tedium of sitting for a painting (indeed two paintings!) why wouldn’t he have chosen the traditional portrait as he did for the Verkolje painting? Or for that matter, why didn’t he pose with the scientific instrument that made him famous, the microscope?
If this is Van Leeuwenhoek in the paintings, perhaps the answer is as simple as this: He posed thus because Vermeer was his friend and he found the project interesting. But again, if he was intrigued by genre paintings celebrating science, why not include the visually charismatic microscopes that he himself made by hand? No, the choice of the Geographer and Astronomer, and the accompanying apparatus for each, is quite deliberate and suggests that something else is going on.
May I suggest, quite speculatively, I admit, that these questions, as well as the issue of the model’s identity, may be illuminated by reference to the unmistakable Masonic symbolism in the paintings.
The most significant and obvious of the Masonic symbols imbedded in the paintings are the square and compasses found in the Geographer. The square and compasses (the word compass is always pluralized in Masonic literature) have for centuries formed the basic symbol of Freemasonry:
Vermeer has placed the compasses in the model’s right hand (just as Verkolje did in his Leeuwenhoek portrait, it should be noted). The square Vermeer has placed slyly, but quite deliberately, on the small table in the right foreground. Notice how the points of the compasses point directly at it. In fact, the two implements fall roughly along a primary, and very traditional, compositional line that extends from the windowsill at the middle of the left edge to the lower right corner. This placement is simply not accidental.
The next bit of Masonic symbolism becomes clear when the paintings are viewed together as companion pieces: The paintings contain the globes terrestrial and celestial, which are familiar to all Freemasons as the pommels that adorn the tops of the pillars found in all Masonic lodges.
Masonic Pillars With Celestial and Terrestial Globes
Again, the placement of these objects is quite sly, but unmistakable as the paintings are clearly companion pieces as is evidenced by the fact that scenes depicted take place in the same study, with the same model wearing the same scholarly regalia.
Lastly, it should be noted that the Geographer and Astronomer will be familiar to Freemasons as traditional practitioners of the liberal art of Geometry.
But how, one may ask, could Masonic symbolism possibly find its way into Vermeer paintings when the first Masonic lodges didn’t appear in the Netherlands until some forty years later? And what does Freemasonry have to do with Van Leeuwenhoek? As it turns out, the connection Van Leeuwenhoek and Freemasonry is quite simple and derives from his membership in the British Royal Society.
The British Royal Society was founded in England in 1660 as a forum for scientific inquiry. The society grew out of the “invisible college” movement, which was an informal, international network for the sharing of scientific knowledge. Significantly, the founders of the Royal Society were to a great extent well known Freemasons such Sir Christopher Wren and Sir Robert Moray. It is no exaggeration to say that Royal Society, inasmuch as it was a natural outgrowth of the invisible college, was in essence a quasi-Masonic institution. Of course, this is not to say that the Royal Society was actually a Masonic lodge itself, or anything of the sort. But what it does mean is that Freemasonry and the Royal Society drew from the same intellectual well because they were populated by the very same influential thinkers, had the same philosophical agenda, and discussed the very same ideas using the same imagery such as the square and compasses!
This portrait of Royal Society founder Sir Christopher Wren in fact amply demonstrates the Masonic zeitgeist of the time:
Brother Wren is posing with compasses in his right hand, just as Van Leeuwenhoek did in his formal portrait, which brings us back to Van Leeuwenhoek and the identity of the Astronomer and Geographer.
Van Leeuwenhoek, it turns out, was a prominent member of the Royal Society. He published his first scientific findings with the Royal Society at the age of 41, an age not too far removed from the seeming age of the Astronomer and Geographer, and was made a member of the Society seven years later after a delegation of Royal Society members visited him in Holland to investigate the validity of his work. He was thereafter a prominent, prolific member, contributing hundreds of scientific letters to the Society over the course of the rest of his life.
Given this connection, it is perhaps not too great a stretch, to suggest that the Geographer and the Astronomer are indeed Van Leeuwenhoek, surrounded by the symbols of scientific reasoning as popularized by Freemasonry and the Royal Society, and that these paintings are a celebration of the Society, it’s goals and his membership.
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