Allegory of the Catholic Faith

Vermeer's Allegory of the Catholic Faith from around 1670-72, at the Metropolitan Museum, is his most overtly programmatic painting—a complex allegory of Catholic theology featuring a woman personifying Faith trampling heresy. The painting's explicit Counter-Reformation iconography is unusual in Protestant Holland and suggests a specific Catholic patron, possibly the Jesuit station near Vermeer's house on the Oude Langendijk. Vermeer himself had converted to Catholicism upon his marriage in 1653.

Vermeer applies his characteristic domestic-interior technique to an allegorical subject, creating a somewhat uneasy combination of realistic spatial rendering and symbolic imagery. The glass orb on the ceiling, reflecting the room, demonstrates his fascination with optical effects even within an essentially programmatic composition.