View of Delft is an oil painting by Johannes Vermeer

Johannes Vermeer

Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer was a Dutch painter who specialized in exquisite, domestic interior scenes of middle class life. Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime...

. Painted ca. 1660-1661, the painting of the Dutch artist's hometown is among his most popular. Painted at a time when cityscape

Cityscape

A cityscape is the urban equivalent of a landscape. Townscape is roughly synonymous with cityscape, though it implies the same difference in urban size and density implicit in the difference between the words city and town. In urban design the terms refer to the configuration of built forms and...

s were not commonplace, it is one of three known paintings of Delft

Delft

Delft is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland , the Netherlands. It is located between Rotterdam and The Hague....

 by Vermeer, along with The Little Street and the lost painting House Standing in Delft. The use of pointillism

Pointillism

Pointillism is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of pure color are applied in patterns to form an image. Georges Seurat developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism. The term Pointillism was first coined by art critics in the late 1880s to ridicule the works...

 in the work suggests it postdates The Little Street.

In 2011, the painting was featured on gold and silver commemorative coins issued by the Royal Dutch Mint

Royal Dutch Mint

The Koninklijke Nederlandse Munt , seated in Utrecht, the Netherlands, is a company owned entirely by the Dutch State, and since 1807 the only Dutch entity allowed to strike and give out coins.-History:...

.