''Woman with a Lute'', also known as ''Woman with a Lute Near a Window'', is a painting created about 1662–1663 by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer and now at the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

in New York. The painting depicts a young woman wearing an ermine-trimmed jacket and enormous pearl earrings as she eagerly looks out a window, presumably expecting a male visitor. "A musical courtship is suggested by the viola da gamba on the floor in the foreground and by the flow of songbooks across the tabletop and onto the floor," according to a web page about the work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art website. The tuning of a lute was recognized by contemporary viewers as a symbol of the virtue of temperance. The oil on canvas work is 20¼ inches high and 18 inches wide (51.4 × 45.7 cm). The painting's canvas was almost certainly cut from the same bolt as that used for ''

Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid ''Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid'' ( nl, Schrijvende vrouw met dienstbode) is a painting by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer, completed in 1670–1671 and held in the National Gallery of Ireland, in Dublin. The work shows a middle-class wo ...

''. The work likely was painted shortly after ''

Young Woman with a Water Pitcher ''Woman with a Water Jug'' (Dutch: ''Vrouw met waterkan''), also known as ''Young Woman with a Water Pitcher'', is a painting finished between 1660–1662 by the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer in the Baroque style. It is oil on canvas, 45.7cm x 4 ...

'', and it shares with that painting its framing of the figure within rectangular motifs. But the painting has more muted tones, reflecting a shift in that direction by Vermeer in the mid- to late 1660s. At this time, Vermeer began using shadows and soft contours to further evoke an atmosphere of intimacy. "The impression of spatial recession and atmosphere is somewhat diminished by darkening with age of the objects in the foreground and by abrasion of the paint surface, mostly in the same area," according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art web page. The painting was given to the museum in 1900 by a bequest of railroad industrialist

Collis P. Huntington Collis Potter Huntington (October 22, 1821 – August 13, 1900) was an American industrialist and railway magnate. He was one of the Big Four of western railroading (along with Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker) who invested ...

References

External links

Web page about the painting
– Metropolitan Museum of Art website
Exhibition web page
Metropolitan Museum of Art
''The Milkmaid'' by Johannes Vermeer
exhibition catalog fully online as PDF from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contains material on ''Woman with a Lute'' (cat. no. 8) {{DEFAULTSORT:Woman With A Lute 1660s paintings Musical instruments in art Genre paintings by Johannes Vermeer Paintings in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Portraits of women Books in art Maps in art Cartography in the Dutch Republic Early modern Netherlandish cartography

See also

References

Further reading

External links