Johannes Vermeer, 'A Young Woman seated at a Virginal', about 1670-2

A Young Woman seated at a Virginal

Johannes Vermeer

Room 16

About the work

Overview

It appears to be dark outside this elegant room: a blue curtain covers the top part of the window, but the glass below it is black. The light which glints in the heavily dilated pupils of the woman seated at the keyboard comes from in front of the painting, an unusual effect for Vermeer.

Significantly, the picture hanging on the wall shows a prostitute flirting with a client. It’s particularly prominent, and this is important because musical scenes like this could be understood in different ways. Some were depicted as bawdy occasions, while others were entirely decorous. Vermeer tended to hedge them with uncertainties, but here the background picture gives an unusually strong hint, which encourages us to wonder if the keyboard player has more than music on her mind.

This painting may have been made to contrast with A Young Woman standing at a Virginal (also in the National Gallery’s collection), which seems to show an example of faithfulness in love.

In-depth

A colourful hanging tapestry has been swept to one side to reveal a young woman seated at a keyboard. It appears to be dark outside this elegant room: a blue curtain covers the top part of the window, but the glass below it is black.The light which gleams on the curves of the base viol in the foreground and glints in the heavily dilated pupils of the woman comes from in front of the painting – an unusual effect in Vermeer’s work. Usually daylight streams into his interiors from a window on the left-hand side of the picture. Here he has created an entirely different mood.

It is a mood that’s also defined by the picture that hangs so prominently on the back wall. This has been identified as The Procuress (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) by Dirck van Baburen, which depicts a ribald scene in which a woman working as a prostitute plays a lute and flirts with a client, while a brothel-keeper demands money from him. A copy of the painting was owned by Vermeer’s mother-in-law, in whose house he lived and worked, and he included it in another painting, The Concert (stolen from Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston). The Concert shows two young women singing and playing a harpsichord while a man accompanies them on a lute.

It is possible that Vermeer simply used the painting, unthinkingly, as a studio prop. But even if a contemporary viewer didn’t know the original, Vermeer has made it easy to decipher the theme. In the National Gallery picture, it is particularly prominent, taking up nearly a quarter of the picture space. It seems far-fetched to suggest that an artist who executed his paintings with such care would have given no thought to the implications of placing such an image so obviously in the background.

This is important because, in the seventeenth century, musical scenes like this could be understood in different ways. They were certainly associated with love and flirtatious gatherings of young people, but some were depicted as bawdy occasions fuelled by alcohol and tobacco while others were apparently entirely decorous. Vermeer painted several but tended to hedge them with uncertainties, leaving the viewer unsure about how they should judge the situation.

The hint given by the background picture here is, for Vermeer, an unusually strong one. We probably shouldn’t take it too literally and assume that the woman in front of the keyboard is also working as a prostitute, but it does seem that we are being encouraged to wonder whether or not she has more than music on her mind. The viol in the foreground is another hint to consider. It not only suggests that she is waiting for an accompanist – the instrument’s shape was sometimes associated with women’s bodies.

This interpretation of the picture is supported by the theory that it was painted as a contrasting pair with A Young Woman standing at a Virginal, which depicts a lone woman standing in front of a keyboard. The two pictures are exactly the same size, were made at about the same time and share many similarities. But the contrasts seem just as significant. The standing woman, pictured in bright sunlight, may be suggestive of faithful, monogamous love, whereas the woman in this evening scene may represent a more mercenary or licentious approach.

Want to find out more?

Delve deeper and explore the catalogue entry for this painting.

Key facts

Details

Full title: A Young Woman seated at a Virginal
Artist: Johannes Vermeer
Artist dates: 1632 - 1675
Date made: about 1670-2
Medium and support: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 51.5 × 45.5 cm
Inscription summary: Signed
Acquisition credit: Salting Bequest, 1910
Inventory number: NG2568
Location: Room 16
Collection: Main Collection
Previous owners: George Salting
Frame: 17th-century Dutch Frame

Provenance

No. 2568 was perhaps in the collection of Diego Duarte, Antwerp, 1682, or in an Anon. sale [Jacobus Abrahamsz. Dissius of Delft?], Amsterdam, 16 May 1696 (lot 37), or in an Anon. sale, Amsterdam, 11 July 1714 (lot 12), but the descriptions of these pictures would also fit No. 1383. It was in the collection of Graf von Schönborn in Pommersfelden, near Bamberg, allegedly by 1746; Pommersfelden Gallery sale, Paris, 17 sqq. May 1867 (lot 78), bought by W. Bürger (pseudonym for Etienne-Joseph-Théophile Thoré) 2,000 francs. Thoré died in 1869 and the picture passed with the greater part of his collection to the Lacroix family, Paris; ‘Thoré-Bürger’ sale, Paris, 5 December 1892 (lot 32), bought by Charles Sedelmeyer (25,000 francs) and sold by him to Lawrie & Co., London, in February 1893. Lent by T. Humphry Ward to the RA in 1894. In the collection of George Salting, London, by 1900, when it was exhibited at the BFAC; Salting Bequest, 1910.

Additional information

Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Neil MacLaren, revised and expanded by Christopher Brown, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The Dutch School: 1600–1900’, London 1991; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.

Exhibition history

2011

Vermeer's Women: Secrets and Silence

The Fitzwilliam Museum

5 October 2011 - 15 January 2012
2013

Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love and Leisure

The National Gallery (London)

26 June 2013 - 8 September 2013
2017

Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting

Musée du Louvre

20 February 2017 - 22 May 2017

National Gallery of Ireland

17 June 2017 - 17 September 2017

National Gallery of Art (Washington DC)

22 October 2017 - 21 January 2018
2020

Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London

The National Museum of Western Art

18 June 2020 - 18 October 2020

The National Museum of Art

3 November 2020 - 31 January 2021
2021

Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London

National Gallery of Australia

5 March 2021 - 14 June 2021
2023

Vermeer

Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

9 February 2023 - 4 June 2023

Bibliography

1866

E. Thoré-Bürger, 'Van der Meer de Delft', Gazette des beaux-arts, II, 1866
1888

H. Havard, Van der Meer de Delft, Paris 1888
1898

C. Sedelmeyer, Illustrated Catalogue of 300 Paintings by Old Masters of the Dutch, Flemish and English School Being Some of the Principal Pictures Which at Various Times Formed Part of the Sedelmeyer Gallery, Paris 1898
1907

C. Hofstede de Groot, Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century, 10 vols, London 1907
1911

E. Plietzsch, Vermeer Van Delft, Leipzig 1911
1911

P. Alfassa, 'Les Vermeers de la Galerie Nationale de Londres', Revue de l'art ancien et moderne, XXX, 1911, pp. 401-8
1914

C. Sedelmeyer (ed.), Hundred Masterpieces: A Selection from Pictures by Old Masters Which Form or have Formed Part of the Sedelmeyer Gallery, Paris 1914
1937

P.L. Hale, Vermeer, eds F.W. Coburn and R.T. Hale, London 1937
1938

A. Heppner, 'Thoré-Bürger en Holland', Oud Holland, 1938
1945

A.B. de Vries, Jan Vermeer van Delft, 2nd edn, Amsterdam 1945
1946

A. Blum, Vermeer et Thoré-Bürger, Geneva 1946
1949

K. Boström, 'Peep-Show or Case', Kunsthistorische Mededelingen, 1949
1950

P.T. Swillens, Johannes Vermeer Painter of Delft: 1632-1675, Utrecht 1950
1958

L. Goldscheider, Jan Vermeer: The Paintings: Complete Edition, London 1958
1960

Maclaren, Neil, National Gallery Catalogues: The Dutch School, 2 vols, London 1960
1971

G. Dogaer, 'De inventaris der schilderijen van Diego Duarte', Jaarboek van het Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerpen, 182, 1971, pp. 195-221
1976

E.R. Samuel, 'The Disposal of Diego Duarte's Stock of Paintings 1692-1697', Jaarboek van het Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerpen, 1976, pp. 305-24
1978

A. Blankert, Johann Vermeer van Delft 1632-1675, English edn, Oxford 1978
1981

N. Bryson, Word and Image: French Painting of the Ancien Régime, Cambridge 1981
1981

L.J. Slatkes, Vermeer and His Contemporaries, New York 1981
1981

A.K. Wheelock, Jan Vermeer, New York 1981
1983

C. Brown, 'Rubens' Watering Place: An Examination of His Landscape Technique', Ringling Museum of Art Journal, 1983, pp. 130-49
1986

G. Aillaud, A. Blankert and J.M. Montias, Vermeer, Paris 1986
1989

J.M. Montias, Vermeer and His Milieu: A Web of Social History, Princeton 1989
1989

C. Wright, Dutch Painting in the Seventeenth Century: Images of a Golden Age in British Collections (exh. cat. Birmingham CMuseum and Art Gallery, 7 October 1989 - 14 January 1990), London 1989
1991

Maclaren, Neil, revised by Christopher Brown, National Gallery Catalogues: The Dutch School, 1600-1900, 2nd edn (revised and expanded), 2 vols, London 1991
1991

J.M. Nash, Vermeer, London 1991
1993

C.A. Beerli, Poétique et société des couleurs. Essai sur la vie des couleurs entre elles et dans l'histoire, Geneva 1993
1994

D. Arasse, Vermeer: Faith in Painting, Princeton 1994
1994

R. Knafou, Vermeer: Mystère du quotidien, Paris 1994
1994

G.J.M. Weber, 'Johannes Vermeer, Pieter Jansz. van Asch und das Problem der Abbildungstreue', Oud Holland, CVIII/2, 1994, pp. 97-106
1994

G.J.M. Weber, '"Om te bevestige[n], aen-te-raden, verbreeden ende vercieren": Rhetorische Exempellehre und die Struktur des "Bildes im Bild"', Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch, LV, 1994, pp. 287-314
1995

A.K. Wheelock, Vermeer and the Art of Painting, New Haven 1995
1995

A.K. Wheelock, 'Der stille Welt der Dinge: Neue Einsichten in die Maltechnik des Jan Vermeer van Delft', Belveder : Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, II, 1995, pp. 6-23
1995

A.K. Wheelock and B.P.J. Broos, Johannes Vermeer (exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 12 November 1995 - 11 February 1996; Mauritshuis, 5 March - 9 June 1996), New Haven 1995
1995

F.S. Jowell, 'Thoré-Bürger and Vermeer: Critical and Commercial Fortunes', in C.P. Schneider, W.W. Robinson and A.I. Davies (eds), Shop Talk. Studies in Honour of Seymour Slive, Cambridge MA 1995, pp. 124-7
1996

F.S. Jowell, 'Thoré-Bürger: A Critical Role in the Art Market', The Burlington Magazine, CXXXVIII/1115, 1996, pp. 115-29
1996

E. Buijsen, 'Music in the Age of Vermeer', in Dutch Society in the Age of Vermeer, Zwolle 1996, pp. 106-23
1997

L. Gowing, Vermeer, London 1997
1997

A.K. Wheelock, Vermeer: The Complete Work, New York 1997
1998

A.K. Wheelock et al., Johannes Vermeer, 1632-1675: Sainte Praxède (exh. cat. Musée de la Chapelle de la Visitation, 1998), Monaco 1998
2001

C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
2001

R. Baarsen et al., Vermeer and the Delft School, New Haven 2001
2004

J. Giltaij, Senses and Sins: Dutch Painters of Daily Life in the Seventeenth Century (exh. cat. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, 23 October 2004 - 9 January 2005; Städtische Galerie im Städelschen Kunstinstitut, 10 February - 1 May 2005), Ostfildern-Ruit 2004

Frame

This is a seventeenth-century Dutch ripple frame, crafted from ebony veneer. The back moulding of the box frame is adorned with a ripple moulding, followed by a scotia and a narrower ripple moulding. It has a bold zigzag ripple on the frieze, ending with a ripple moulding at the sight edge.

In 2002 a large box frame was used to make smaller frames for two paintings by Vermeer, A Young Woman standing at a Virginal and A Young Woman seated at a Virginal. Both original and replica metal corner coverings feature on the outside of the frames.

Within the painting of A Young Woman seated at a Virginal, there is a framed painting depicted, giving us a record of contemporary taste in frames.

About this record

If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.

Images

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The young woman at the keyboard holds our eye with a direct gaze. The empty chair suggests she is expecting someone and the large painting of a naked Cupid, the god of erotic love, on the wall behind her may be a signal that she is waiting for her lover. Scenes of music making were a popular genr...

Room 16