Maria Thins

Dirck van Baburen, The Procuress, 1622, oil on canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The painting was owned by Maria Thins, mother-in-law of Johannes Vermeer, who reproduced it within two of his own paintings.[1]

Maria Thins (ca. Gouda 1593-Delft, December 27, 1680) was the mother-in-law of Johannes Vermeer and a member of the Gouda Thins family .^[1]

Life

In 1622 she married Reynier Bolnes, a prominent and prosperous brickmaker. In 1635 the marriage deteriorated; her sister found her crying in bed after her husband had beaten her. The couple moved to another house, where Wouter Crabeth had lived. There Bolnes had his dinner in the front room, together with his son, while he refused to talk to her and slept in a room upstairs. At one time her daughter Cornelia was locked up by her father and in 1641 Maria Thins decided to move to Delft, where her brother lived. Her husband refused to divorce her, but in 1649 she received a considerable sum of money from him.

In 1653 her daughter Catharina married Johannes Vermeer in Schipluiden but it is not exactly known when the couple moved in at her rather spacious house on Oude Langendijk. Vermeer had his atelier on the front side of the second floor.

Maria Thins apparently played an important role in their life. She was a devotee of the Jesuit order in the nearby Catholic Church, and this seems to have influenced Johannes and Catherina too. Their third son was called Ignatius, after the founder of the Jesuit Order.^[2] It is not known if the children were baptized in the Catholic Church, because baptismal records from that period are no longer extant.

In 1663 her son Willem, a jobless bachelor, was locked up in an institution after an argument with his mother, and for attacking his pregnant sister Catharina with a stick. In 1665 Maria Thins was entrusted with her son's property. She was not required by law to limit his share to the legal minimum, but she mentioned that he had been calling her names since his youth.^[3]

In 1672 Maria Thins got into financial difficulties: her land near Schoonhoven was flooded to prevent the French army crossing the Dutch Water Line. In 1675, when Vermeer went on several business trips for his mother-in-law, first to Gouda, when her husband had died, and then to Amsterdam. There he cheated her and borrowed money by fraudulently using her name.^[4] Vermeer got into a frenzy, as his wife wrote, because of all their financial difficulties, and died suddenly. After Vermeer's death, Maria Thins stated that she used her income to help support the struggling painter and his growing family. For her help she received The Art of Painting, one of the finest, most mysterious and famous paintings in the history of Western Art. In 1676 she lived in the Hague but moved back to Delft where, upon her death, she was buried in the protestant Old Church on 27 Dec 1680, next to Vermeer. The burial record states that she died as the widow of Rijnier Bolnes. Catharina moved to Breda. Her daughter Catharina Bollenes (Bolnes) received "Holy Oil", according to the records of the Roman Catholic parish of St Joseph, before being buried on 30 Dec 1687.

References

1. ^ In the Great or Saint John Church in Gouda there is a stained glass window donated by her ancestors.
2. ^ Bailey, Anthony, Vermeer: A View of Delft, p. 63. Macmillan, 2002. ISBN 0805069305.
3. ^ J.M. Montias (1989) Vermeer and his milieu, p. 160-169.
4. ^ J.M. Montias, p. 210-212.

External links

• http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-17942747.html
• http://www.vermeerscamera.co.uk/reply4.htm
• http://www.bergerfoundation.ch/

Persondata
Name	Thins, Maria
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Date of birth
Place of birth
Date of death	1680
Place of death