Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid by Johannes Vermeer

Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid

Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid is a painting by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer, completed between 1670–1671 and held in the National Gallery of Ireland. The work shows a middle-class woman attended by a maid who is presumably acting as messenger and go-between for the lady and her lover. The work is seen as a bridge between the quiet restraint and self-containment of Vermeer's work of the 1660s and his relatively cooler work of the 1670s. It may have been partly inspired by Ter Borch's painting Woman Sealing a Letter. The painting's canvas was almost certainly cut from the same bolt used for Woman with a Lute.^[2]

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