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  Books The Violence in Vermeer It is easy to treat the Dutch artist as an agreeable intimist—a transcriber of domestic niceties. But he grew up in a world of war, starvation, and massacres. His paintings were safe havens. By  April 13, 2026 “Woman Writing a Letter with Her Maid,” circa 1670. One thing that sets Vermeer apart from his contemporaries is a sense that the stillness in his quiet rooms may not hold. Art work by Johannes Vermeer / Courtesy National Gallery of Ireland Save this story In October, 2022, a man approached Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring” in the Mauritshuis museum, in The Hague, and rested his shaved head against the painting. He was not an eager art historian who believed that the work demanded the closest possible inspection and hoped to meet the subject eyeball to eyeball. (A not unreasonable plan: the speck of reflected light in each of the girl’s irises is a famous touch.) He was a climate protester, wearing a T-shirt that bore the slogan “ Just...