We present some comments on the diversity of the paintings by Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) depicted on postage stamps. We have found 20 of the 36 "recognized" Vermeer paintings depicted on postage stamps issued by 29 "countries"; by country we mean here a stamp-issuing region that issues or has issued its own postage stamps. We apply Fisher's α index of biodiversity [11] to compare the diversity of Vermeer paintings depicted on postage stamps with the diversity of two other data sets [26]. We illustrate our article with images of 7 Vermeer paintings depicted on 10 postage stamps issued by 5 different countries.
Department of Mathematics and Statistics, McGill University, 805 ouest, rue Sherbrooke, Montréal (Québec), Canada H3A 2K6
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