Johannes Vermeer Delft Views Journal — The Little Street & View of Delft Notebook

There are cities that have been painted so often, and so well, that the paintings have become inseparable from the cities themselves. But no city has been painted with the luminous precision and quiet tenderness that Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675) brought to Delft. He painted it only twice in surviving works — and yet those two paintings have made his city immortal. The Little Street (c.1658, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) shows a quiet Delft alley: brick façades, white-framed windows, a woman in a doorway, children on the step — one of only three surviving Vermeer cityscapes, transformed by his luminous handling of northern light into something that feels both completely specific and completely universal. View of Delft (c.1660–1661, Mauritshuis, The Hague) is the other side of the same vision: a panoramic view of the city across the water, its towers and rooftops reflected in the still canal, bathed in the light of a clearing storm. Marcel Proust called it “the most beautiful painting in the world.”

Together they constitute the most complete portrait of a seventeenth-century Dutch city ever painted — the intimate alley and the grand panorama, the domestic and the monumental, the quiet beauty of a city seen through the eyes of its greatest painter. This journal carries both across its full wraparound cover: The Little Street on the front, View of Delft on the back, rendered with the matte precision that preserves every detail of Vermeer’s light.

Product Details

• Format: Hardcover journal
• Pages: 150 lined pages (75 sheets) with perforations for easy removal
• Binding: Casewrap sewn binding — flexible and lay-flat
• Dimensions: 5.75 × 8 inches
• Weight: 100 g
• Cover: Matte laminated full-wrap print
• Front cover: Johannes Vermeer, The Little Street (c.1658, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)
• Back cover: Johannes Vermeer, View of Delft (c.1660–1661, Mauritshuis, The Hague)

Perfect For

• Art history enthusiasts and Vermeer admirers
• Travelers to the Netherlands, Delft, the Rijksmuseum and the Mauritshuis
• Lovers of Dutch Golden Age painting and 17th-century art
• Readers of Proust and admirers of the “little patch of yellow wall”
• Anyone who finds beauty in quiet moments and ordinary streets
• A beautiful gift for art lovers, museum enthusiasts, and travelers

The Story Behind the Paintings

The Delft of the Dutch Golden Age, the luminous northern light that Vermeer captured like no other painter, and why Proust dragged himself from his sickbed to see View of Delft one last time — read the full story on our blog →