Hendrick van Buyten was a baker in Delft

Delft

Delft is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland , the Netherlands. It is located between Rotterdam and The Hague....

. He is famous because of his connection to Johannes Vermeer

Johannes Vermeer

Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer was a Dutch painter who specialized in exquisite, domestic interior scenes of middle class life. Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime...

. In August 1663 he owned a painting by Vermeer when he was visited by Balthasar de Monconys

Balthasar de Monconys

Balthasar de Monconys was a French traveller, diplomat, physicist and magistrate, who left a diary, which was published by his son as Journal des voyages de Monsieur de Monconys, Conseiller du Roy en ses Conseils d’Estat & Privé, & Lieutenant Criminel au Siège Presidial de Lyon, 2 vols., Lyon,...

. Van Buyten told the diplomat, accompanied by two friends, he had paid 600 guilders (?) for the painting. Monconys opined that he would have thought he had overpaid for it had he bought it for sixty guilders.

In a disposition of January 1676, a month and a half after Vermeer's death, Catharina Bolnes appeared before a notary to acknowledge that she had sold and transferred two paintings by her late husband to Van Buyten. Catharina further declared that she had been paid 617 guilder

Guilder

Guilder is the English translation of the Dutch gulden — from Old Dutch for 'golden'. The guilder originated as a gold coin but has been a common name for a silver or base metal coin for some centuries...

s for the two paintings, which she owed Van Buyten for bread

Bread

Bread is a staple food prepared by cooking a dough of flour and water and often additional ingredients. Doughs are usually baked, but in some cuisines breads are steamed , fried , or baked on an unoiled frying pan . It may be leavened or unleavened...

 delivered. He would return the paintings, a person playing on a cittern and another representing two persons one of whom is sitting writing a letter if she paid all her debt

Debt

A debt is an obligation owed by one party to a second party, the creditor; usually this refers to assets granted by the creditor to the debtor, but the term can also be used metaphorically to cover moral obligations and other interactions not based on economic value.A debt is created when a...

s. Catharina had persistently urged him to. She had over twelve years to refund the main part of the debt at fifty guilders per year, and she did not even have to pay interest

Interest

Interest is a fee paid by a borrower of assets to the owner as a form of compensation for the use of the assets. It is most commonly the price paid for the use of borrowed money, or money earned by deposited funds....

. Van Buyten must have delivered a great deal of bread to accumulate a total credit of over 726 guilders.

Van Buyten was married to Machtelt van Asson and in 1683 to Adriana Waelpot. If he earned more than 2.855 guilders a year, he belonged to the richest people in Holland, where a guilder a day was seen as a very good salary.

External links

• http://www.essentialvermeer.com/clients_patrons/vermeer's_clients_and_patrons.html#Buyten
• Montias in Google Books