''The Procuress'' (Dutch: ''De koppelaarster'') is a 1656 oil-on-canvas painting by the then 24-year-old
Johannes Vermeer
Johannes Vermeer ( , , #Pronunciation of name, see below; also known as Jan Vermeer; October 1632 – 15 December 1675) was a Dutch Baroque Period Painting, painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle class, middle-class life. ...
. It can be seen in the
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister
The Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (, ''Old Masters Gallery'') in Dresden, Germany, displays around 750 paintings from the 15th to the 18th centuries. It includes major Italian Renaissance works as well as Dutch and Flemish paintings. Outstandin ...
in
Dresden
Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label=Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth larg ...
. It is his first
genre painting
Genre painting (or petit genre), a form of genre art, depicts aspects of everyday life by portraying ordinary people engaged in common activities. One common definition of a genre scene is that it shows figures to whom no identity can be attached ...
and shows a scene of contemporary life, an image of mercenary love perhaps in a
brothel
A brothel, bordello, ranch, or whorehouse is a place where people engage in sexual activity with prostitutes. However, for legal or cultural reasons, establishments often describe themselves as massage parlors, bars, strip clubs, body rub par ...
. It differs from his earlier biblical and mythological scenes. It is one of only three paintings Vermeer signed and dated (the other two are ''
The Astronomer'' and ''
The Geographer
''The Geographer'' (Dutch: ) is a painting created by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer in 1668–1669, and is now in the collection of the Städel museum in Frankfurt, Germany. It is closely related to Vermeer's ''The Astronomer (painting), The Astr ...
''). In 1696 the painting, being sold on an auction in Amsterdam, was named "A merry company in a room".
The woman in black, the leering coupler, "in a nun's costume", could be the eponymous
procuress
Procuring or pandering is the facilitation or provision of a prostitute or other sex worker in the arrangement of a sex act with a customer. A procurer, colloquially called a pimp (if male) or a madam (if female, though the term pimp has still ...
, while the man to her right, "wearing a black beret and a
doublet
Doublet is a word derived from the Latin ''duplus'', "twofold, twice as much",