Cornelis Bega, who spoke no French at all, returned home, but Van der Vinne and Boelen stayed in Geneva for 15 months.

On 4 April 1655, Thomas Francis, Prince of Carignano commanded the Waldensians to attend Mass or remove to the upper valleys, giving them twenty days in which to sell their lands.

In the name of his father, the Duke of Savoy he sent an army and on 24 April, at 4 a.m., the signal was given for a general massacre so brutal, that it aroused indignation throughout Europe.

Oliver Cromwell began petitioning on behalf of the Vaudois, and John Milton wrote his famous poem about this, "On the Late Massacre in Piedmont."

Just as Milton did, Van der Vinne expressed his own disgust and horror in a long poem, and the next month he decided to go home.

When he spoke of his own work, van der Vinne often repeated the advice of his teacher Frans Hals, saying that "one must boldly smear the paint on; when you become confident in the art, then neatness will follow".

What survives today from his hand are mostly still lifes and genre scenes, often with a similar arrangement of a vanitas items, and many include a trompe l'oeil portrait sketch on a paper hanging off a desk.

By the time he became a widower, Van der Vinne was an established painter in Haarlem and had served on the board of the St Luke's guild in 1661 and 1662.

This list was edited by his son Laurens in 1702 with 157 'd's to indicate which of these artists had died before his father, and added to his Geslagt-Register, which was a description of active painters from the Haarlem guild.

Van der Vinne's diaries, which he embellished on his return, were never published in his lifetime, but were used by Houbraken for his great work on Dutch painters, the Schouburg.