Sweet RA is known about the life of Vermeer, or Jan van der Meer van Delft, as he was also known. However, noting his novel 'name-cum-postal-district', clever art boffins have astutely surmised that Jan was born in Delft in Holland (or possibly New Delhi) and that he served his apprenticeship with Dutch painter, Carl Fabritius (or failing that, his local Cheese Marketing Board), after which he is believed to have become an art dealer (or windmill repair man).
Give or take the odd lost masterpiece (including the legendary, 'Interior with Woman, Lute and IKEA Catalogue' that still languishes in a corner of a little known Amsterdam flea market) Jan only managed to turn out about 36 (or was it seven thousand) of his exquisite paintings. His limited output probably had something to with the fact that: a) he painted in a manner so slow and painstaking that observing him was said to be like 'watching paint dry' b) he was the father of 11 children and c) he died a tragic early death, possibly after a life spent hanging around shoe shops, attending open evenings and attending to the needs of his hyper-fertile partner.
Clogs popped, Jan and his pictures were more or less forgotten until the nineteenth century when the notoriously 'slow to spot a genius' art-buying public finally wised up to his wonderfulness. Sometime after this, hearing of the new interest in Jan's work, and being genuinely moved to tears by his sad life story, Dutch forger 'Handy' Hans van Meegeren helpfully 'resurrected' some undiscovered Vermeers and flogged them to 'not-so-gullible' Hermann Goering, who had the sense to pay for them with forged banknotes.
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