Art by Johannes Vermeer

Only around 34 to 37 paintings are confidently attributed to Vermeer, an extraordinarily small surviving output that's made every one of them individually famous, especially Girl with a Pearl Earring, sometimes called the "Mona Lisa of the North." He worked in Delft his whole life, almost never depicting anything beyond quiet domestic interiors, women reading letters, pouring milk, at a window, lit by the same soft, consistent light that's led some historians to suspect he used a camera obscura to help compose his scenes. He died deeply in debt, leaving his wife and eleven surviving children, and his reputation faded almost completely for two centuries before 19th-century critics rediscovered and rebuilt it into what it is today.