Johannes Vermeer was one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age.

Unlike many of his contemporary painters, however, he didn't leave a large body of work behind.

The paintings he did create have left experts in both art and technology,

wondering if he didn't have a secret that helped him with his craft.

A technical secret, not necessarily an artistic one.

Learn more about Vermeer, and the question as to if he and other painters used optical devices to help them paint on this

episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Book your ticket to happiness with Sun Express Airlines. Johannes Vermeer, hereby known just as Vermeer, was born in 1632 in Delft, Holland.

He was born to a middle class family and as far as we know he was born, raised, and died in Delft, never traveling beyond the Netherlands.

We don't know a lot about his early life, but we do know that his father was an art dealer

and the owner of an inn.

And when his father died, Vermeer took over his father's art business. We know he was born a Protestant and

married a Catholic woman and then converted to Catholicism before his marriage in 1653.

His career as a painter is much more ambiguous, and this is where the mystery of Vermeer begins.

Most painters from this time period were members of a local painters guild

and would have been trained by a local master painter.

While we like to think of these great painters as tortured artists,

in reality it was mostly a job.

Painting was a business and they were hired by clients to paint.

Perhaps the analogy isn't quite apt but in many respects

they were like the photographer you'd hire at glamor shots down at your local

mall. A painter from this period would probably declare who trained them because that training would be part of their pedigree.

It is what they would use to convince a buyer that they were worth hiring.

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