Johannes Vermeer (/vərˈmɪər, vərˈmɛər/ vər-MEER, vər-MAIR, Dutch: [joːˈɦɑnəs fərˈmeːr]; see below; also known as Jan 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. During his lifetime, he was a moderately successful provincial genre painter, recognized in Delft and The Hague. He produced relatively few paintings, primarily earning his living as an art dealer. He was not wealthy; at his death, his wife was left in debt.

Vermeer worked slowly and with great care, and frequently used very expensive pigments. He is particularly renowned for making masterful use of light in his work. "Almost all his paintings", Hans Koningsberger wrote, "are apparently set in two smallish rooms in his house in Delft; they show the same furniture and decorations in various arrangements and they often portray the same people, mostly women."

The modest celebrity he enjoyed during his life gave way to obscurity after his death. He was barely mentioned in Arnold Houbraken's major source book on 17th-century Dutch painting (Grand Theatre of Dutch Painters and Women Artists, published 1718) and, as a result, was omitted from subsequent surveys of Dutch art for nearly two centuries. In the 19th century, Vermeer was rediscovered by Gustav Friedrich Waagen and Théophile Thoré-Bürger, who published an essay attributing 66 works to him, although only 34 paintings are universally attributed to him today. Since that time, Vermeer's reputation has grown enormously.

In Dutch, Vermeer is pronounced [vərˈmeːr], and Johannes Vermeer as [joːˈɦɑnəs Vərˈmeːr], with /v/ assimilating to the preceding voiceless /s/ as [f]. The usual English pronunciation is /vərˈmɪər/ vər-MEER, with /vɜːrˈmɪər/ vur-MEER, with a long first vowel, occurring in the UK. /vərˈmɛər/ vər-MAIR is also documented. Another pronunciation, /vɛərˈmɪər/ vair-MEER, is attested from the UK.

Relatively little was known about Vermeer's life until recently. He seems to have been devoted exclusively to his art, living out his life in the city of Delft. Until the 19th century, the only sources of information were a few registers, official documents, and comments by other artists; for this reason, Thoré-Bürger named him "The Sphinx of Delft". John Michael Montias added details on the family from the city archives of Delft in his Artists and Artisans in Delft: A Socio-Economic Study of the Seventeenth Century (1982).

Johannes Vermeer was baptized within the Reformed Church on 31 October 1632. His mother, Digna Baltens (c. 1596–1670), was from Antwerp. Digna's father, Balthasar Geerts, or Gerrits (born in Antwerp in or around 1573), led an enterprising life in metalworking, and was arrested for counterfeiting. Vermeer's father, named Reijnier Janszoon, was a middle-class worker of silk or caffa (a mixture of silk and cotton or wool). He was the son of Jan Reyersz and Cornelia (Neeltge) Goris. As an apprentice in Amsterdam, Reijnier lived on fashionable Sint Antoniesbreestraat, a street with many resident painters at the time. In 1615, Reijnier married Digna. The couple moved to Delft and had a daughter named Gertruy who was baptized in 1620. In 1625, Reijnier was involved in a fight with a soldier named Willem van Bylandt who died from his wounds five months later. Around this time, Reijnier began dealing in paintings. In 1631, he leased an inn, which he called "The Flying Fox". In 1635, he lived on Voldersgracht 25 or 26. In 1641, he bought a larger inn on the market square, named after the Flemish town "Mechelen". The acquisition of the inn constituted a considerable financial burden. When Reijnier died in October 1652, Vermeer took over the operation of the family's art business.

In April 1653, Johannes Reijniersz Vermeer married a Catholic woman, Catharina Bolnes (Bolenes). The blessing took place in the quiet nearby village of Schipluiden. 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. The fact that Vermeer's father was in considerable debt also did not help in discussions on the marriage. Leonaert Bramer, who was Catholic himself, put in a good word for Vermeer and it was this that led Maria to drop her oppositions. According to art historian Walter Liedtke, Vermeer's conversion seems to have been made with conviction. His painting The Allegory of Faith, made between 1670 and 1672, placed less emphasis on the artists' usual naturalistic concerns and more on symbolic religious applications, including the sacrament of the Eucharist. Walter Liedtke, in Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, suggests that it was made for a learned and devout Catholic patron, perhaps for his schuilkerk, or "hidden church". At some point, the couple moved in with Catharina's mother, who lived in a rather spacious house at Oude Langendijk, almost next to a hidden Jesuit church. There Vermeer lived for the rest of his life, producing paintings in the front room on the second floor. 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. Most of these names are those of saints; the youngest (Ignatius) was likely named after the Ignatius of Loyola.

It is unclear where and with whom Vermeer apprenticed as a painter. There is some speculation that Carel Fabritius may have been his teacher, based upon a controversial interpretation of a text written in 1668 by printer Arnold Bon. Art historians have found no hard evidence to support this. Local authority Leonaert Bramer acted as a friend, but his style of painting is rather different from Vermeer's. Liedtke suggests that Vermeer taught himself using information from one of his father's connections. Some scholars think that Vermeer was trained under Catholic painter Abraham Bloemaert. Vermeer's style is similar to that of some of the Utrecht Caravaggists, whose works are depicted as paintings-within-paintings in the backgrounds of several of his compositions.