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.

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.