Pieter van Ruijven

Pieter van Ruijven was a wealthy Delft citizen and the principal known patron of Johannes Vermeer. He and his wife Maria de Knuijt appear to have acquired a substantial group of Vermeer’s paintings, which later passed through their family and helped preserve the artist’s work.

Van Ruijven and his wife Maria de Knuijt seem to have acquired numerous Vermeer paintings directly, creating the largest early concentration of the artist’s work; much of this group later passed to their daughter Magdalena and her husband Jacob Dissius.

In Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, Her duties place her between Vermeer’s volatile wife Catharina, his practical mother-in-law Maria Thins, their children and the patron Pieter van Ruijven.