The Geographer

The terrestrial globe on the cabinet is a specific published object — a Jodocus Hondius terrestrial globe from the 1613 edition. Scholars have identified it from the continents visible on its face. Vermeer's Astronomer, painted a year earlier, shows its matched pair: the Hondius celestial globe. Vermeer also owned a set of Willem Blaeu's atlases (still in his estate inventory). The dividers, the papers, the books all point to a quiet 17th-century Dutch trade: making the world into a document. Now at Städel Museum, Frankfurt @staedelmuseum