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[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="1600"] Vue du site connectvermeer.org[/caption]For many art lovers and museum visitors, Johannes Vermeer stands out as the mysterious genius of Dutch seventeenth-century genre painting. However, as this website reveals, he was not working in isolation.The third quarter of the seventeenth century marks the peak of the global economic power of the Dutch Republic. Members of the elite increasingly showed off their social status by subscribing to certain codes of dress, manners and speech, and demanded a type of art that reflected their self-image. The ‘new wave’ of genre painting emerged in the early 1650s when artists began to focus on idealised, superbly staged depictions of the domestic life and courtship between elegant ladies and gentlemen. While Johannes Vermeer is currently the most renowned painter of such scenes, his subjects, compositions and figure types owe much to paintings by other artists including Gerrit Dou, Gerard ter Borch, Jan Steen and Frans van Mieris. These artists were aware of each other’s work, drew inspiration from it, and attempted to surpass each other.Through a series of interactive visualisations, this website allows users to discover the network of connections between Vermeer and his sixteen contemporaries. Users can discover the strength and likelihood of relationships between the seventeen artists, the impact of an individual artist’s paintings on the work of his contemporaries, as well as how artists adopted, adapted and disguised elements, from their peers’ work, in their own paintings.This website complements the exhibition, Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting: Inspiration and Rivalry, which explores the fascinating network of relationships among Dutch genre painters active 1650–1675. Bringing together the work of Vermeer and contemporary painters of exquisite scenes of everyday life, this thought-provoking exhibition gives visitors an insight into how these artists admired, inspired, and rivalled each other.Curated by Dr Adriaan E. Waiboer, Head of Collections and Research, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin; Dr Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Curator of Northern Baroque Painting, National Gallery of Art, Washington; and Dr Blaise Ducos, Curator of 17th- and 18th-century Dutch and Flemish paintings, Musée du Louvre, Paris.http://connectvermeer.org/