During the previous half-century, Johannes Vermeer has emerged as one of the greatest painters of the Baroque era. Nevertheless, the uncommon depth and subtlety of his religious allegories have not been adequately noted in scholarship. In this lecture, we will look at a pair of paintings that figures forth the doctrine of Jesus Christ as it is represented in the Gospel of John and compare Vermeer’s allegory with similar ones by his contemporaries.

Gregory Harwell studied Economics, Literature, Philosophy, History and Art History, in that order, at the University of Texas at Austin, Heidelberg University and Princeton University, where he received his doctorate. He has taught art history at the University of Southern California, UC Riverside, UC Santa Barbara and at UCLA since 2011. He has written extensively on the numismatic arts in the Renaissance and has recently completed two books: one on the French painter, Jean Chardin, and a history book on the Flemish Uprising of 1488. Dr. Harwell is currently working on a book about art and religion in early Modern Europe.

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