artporn @lemm.ee craftyindividual @lemm.ee 5 mo. ago

Girl Reading at an Open Window - Vermeer (1657-59)

13 comments

I love the reflection of the face on the window
I am fascinated by fact that the upper right is where someone painted a painting.
- It feels like a flex when painters paint paintings inside their paintings.
- Yo dawg... We heard you like paintings...
- I thought the painting was a window and wondered why it wasn't titled "huge baby stands outside window during the apocalypse"
- Had a wee gander at the entry about the painting on Wikipedia, and learned that that part had been painted over after Vermeer's death, only to be revealed by restoration in 2021!
  
  EDIT: http://www.essentialvermeer.com/cat_about/open.html
  
  Exciting, thanks.
- Fascinated by what it is saying to us about the rest of the painting, and the beholder.
  
  Some story going on here!
  
  There's always a lot going on with Vermeer. Often female subjects and the lower classes.
The painting on the wall seems so incongruous, less in style, but the attitude of Cupid staring right at us, bow down, treading on something, a mask at his feet and his arm as if to draw the curtain between us and the scene.

Is the girl perhaps reading a letter which will reveal to her that her beloved is not as she believed?

Vermeer's scenes are always so exquisite and tense in their quietude, but this one is particularly intriguing & the way her face is reflected in the float-glass of the pane, and the dust on the window is devastatingly good.

Kind of feel Cupid there is somehow a portrait of the artist, and also indicting the viewer.

Going to have to go and read up on this painting now.

EDIT: Turns out the painting on the wall was only discovered by x-ray in 1979, confirmed by extensive analysis in 2017 to have been covered over with paint after Vermeer's death, was restored to reveal it as he intended in 2021. Explains why I felt so baffled to have not come across it before!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl_Reading_a_Letter_at_an_Open_Window

FURTHER EDIT: better article & correction of some details in previous edit. http://www.essentialvermeer.com/cat_about/open.html
- From your link, what it looked like before restoration:
  
  Before restoration
First time I've ever seen this particular Vermeer painting, and his signature kit of optical tricks is all there - the reflection on the glass, a painting or mirror staring back at you, the light playing with an intricate and crumpled fabric.

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