Death In Delft - Facts

 

Master Mercurius is a scholar in the university in Leiden. Leiden is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. A university city since 1575, Leiden has been one of Europe's most prominent scientific centres for more than four centuries.

It is the year 1671 and Master Mercurius is sent to Delft to investigate the abduction of three girls. Delft  is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. 

There he meets Johannes Vermeer. Johannes Vermeer (October 1632 – 15 December 1675) was a Dutch painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. He is considered one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age.

Vermeer was married to Catharine and they had nine children. In April 1653, Johannes Vermeer married a Catholic woman, Catharina Bolnes. Vermeer's new mother-in-law, Maria Thins, was initially opposed to the marriage as she was significantly wealthier than he, and it was probably she who insisted that Vermeer convert to Catholicism before the marriage on 5 April. 

 His wife gave birth to 15 children, four of whom were buried before being baptized but were registered as "child of Johan Vermeer". The names of 10 of Vermeer's children are known from wills written by relatives: Maertge, Elisabeth, Cornelia, Aleydis, Beatrix, Johannes, Gertruyd, Franciscus, Catharina, and Ignatius.

The book refers to Vermeer's painting 'View of Delft'. View of Delft  is an oil painting by Johannes Vermeer, painted c. 1659–1661. The painting of the Dutch artist's hometown is among his best known. It is one of three known paintings of Delft by Vermeer, along with The Little Street and the lost painting House Standing in Delft, and his only cityscape.[

Maria Thins, his mother-in-law, lived with Vermeer and the rest of the family. Maria Thins (c. 1593 – 27 December 1680) was the mother-in-law of Johannes Vermeer. 

In the book there is a reference to Vermeer dying poor. Vermeer died on 15 December 1675, after a short illness. He was 43 years old, and was buried in the Protestant Old Church on the same day. In a petition to her creditors, Catharina Bolnes attributed her husband's death to the stress of financial pressures.

Another important person Mercurius meets is  Antoine van Leeuwenhoek. Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek ( 24 October 1632 – 26 August 1723) was a Dutch microbiologist and microscopist in the Golden Age of Dutch art, science and technology. A largely self-taught man in science, he is commonly known as "the Father of Microbiology", and one of the first microscopists and microbiologists.

Van Leeuwenhoek shows Mercurius microscopes beings he calls animalcules. Animalcule (Latin for 'little animal'; from animal and -culum) is an archaic term for microscopic organisms that included bacteria, protozoans, and very small animals. The word was invented by 17th-century Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek to refer to the microorganisms he observed in rainwater.

There is a reference to Leonart Bramer, who was friends with Vermeer. Leonaert Bramer, also Leendert or Leonard (24 December 1596 – before 10 February 1674), was a Dutch painter known primarily for genre, religious, and history paintings. 

The character refer to an explosion that took place in 1654. The Delft Explosion, also known as the Delft Thunderclap, occurred on 12 October 1654 when a gunpowder store exploded, destroying much of the city. 

Mercurius calls one of the characters as a Remonstrant. The Remonstrants (or the Remonstrant Brotherhood) are a Protestant movement that split from the Dutch Reformed Church in the early 17th century. 

Mercurius says that on Good Friday some men wear a hairshirt. A cilice, also known as a sackcloth, was originally a garment or undergarment made of coarse cloth or animal hair (a hairshirt) worn close to the skin. It is used by members of various Christian traditions as a self-imposed means of repentance and mortification of the flesh; as an instrument of penance, it is often worn during the Christian penitential season of Lent, especially on Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, and other Fridays of the Lenten season.

Aleydis, Vermeer's daughter, who has aspirations to be a nun, mentions some female martyrs. One is St Lucy and the other St Agatha. 

Lucia of Syracuse (c. 283 – 304 AD), also called Santa Lucia and better known as Saint Lucy, was a Roman Christian martyr who died during the Diocletianic Persecution. Absent in the early narratives and traditions, at least until the fifteenth century, is the story of Lucia tortured by eye-gouging. 

Agatha of Sicily[a] (c. 231 – c. 251 AD) is an early Christian virgin and martyr.

Mercurius goes to the Hague and visits the Binnenhof. The Binnenhof is a complex of buildings in the city centre of The Hague, Netherlands. It houses the meeting place of both houses of the States General of the Netherlands, as well as the Ministry of General Affairs and the office of the Prime Minister of the Netherlands.