...understanding Vermeer's "A Lady Standing at a Virginal"

One of the unique features of Dutch genre painting is its interest in creating realistic scenes which, paradoxically, usually have a symbolic content. Few artists created scenes as lifelike as those of Vermeer, and none were as capable of creating figures in these interiors whose mental states seem to transcend the everyday. The crystalline and realistic space of this painting acts as a vehicle for a representation of love. The association of music with love is common in early Modern Europe and is found in numerous Dutch paintings. In this case, the amorous content is confirmed through the presence of a painting of Cupid. The same painting also appears in another work by Vermeer, Girl Interrupted in Her Music and also found in the painting Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window until the artist decided to eliminate it. The painting is a work by Cesar van Everdingen (below right) which must have belonged to Vermeer (in the inventory of his widow's possessions in 1676 a painting of this subject is mentioned). As De Jongh has indicated, the painting of Cupid (upper right) was inspired by an emblem in Otto van Veen's Amorum Emblemata (below),  published in Antwerp in 1608 which alludes to faithful love. It seems likely that by including this painting in his composition, Vermeer alludes to a concept of love which includes fidelity.

As various authors have noted, it is possible that this canvas formed a pair with the painting Lady Seated at the Virginals, as they share similarities of subject, size and technique. In that painting the woman's smile, the presence of an unplayed viola and the painting on the end wall by Dirk van Baburen of a brothel scene, indicate that the artist is inviting the viewer to accompany the woman in the game of love. This is also suggested by the difference in the lighting in the two paintings: while in the present work the room is illuminated by a strong light which enters through the window, in the composition with the woman seated we are in a dosed interior, darker and more private. Vermeer may have represented two different types of love in these paintings, faithfull love in the Lady Standing and a mercenary type of love in the Lady Seated.

The landscapes in the painting on the wall and on the lid of the virginals are both from a single painting by the Delft artist Pieter Groenewegen (center below). If they play some role in the meaning of the picture, it is possible that their presence acts as a metaphor for the purity and beauty of the woman, as found in contemporary literature.

In contrast to the diffused outlines and denser atmosphere of Vermeer's paintings of the 1660s, this work from the early 1670s is more crystalline in atmosphere, the outlines are defined with greater precision and the picture surface is smoother. However, what has not changed is the artist's skill in capturing the effects of light which enter through the window and focus our attention on the picture frames and the woman's clothes and accessories.

The mood of Vermeer's paintings also changes around 1670: in contrast to the calm and concentration of his works of the previous decade, here the young woman's gaze and the hint of a smile suggest a more direct relationship with the viewer.

Among the most striking aspects of this wonderful painting is the harmony and clarity of the composition. The rectangular and precise forms of the windows, tiles, framed paintings, instrument and chair all echo each other, while also activating the spaces between them. The straight lines of all these elements contrast with the rounded forms of the woman and the landscapes. The exquisite ivory white of the wall is emphasized by the pale shadows which are cast by the pictures and the wall in the lower left corner and are gradually absorbed by its startling clarity.

Cupid and the Viewer

A Lady Standing at the Virginal addresses us directly; so too does Cupid in the painting on the wall, which reappears in Vermeer's Girl Interrupted in Her Music and was initially included in the background of the Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window  before Vermeer painted it out. It has been compared to a print from Otto van Veen's emblem book, Amorum Emblemata (Emblems of Love; 1608), of Cupid holding a tablet inscribed with a ''l'' and stepping on several tablets with other numbers to show that true lave is directed to only one. Other scholars have noted that the object held by Vermeer's Cupid is in fact, blank and furthermore that there are no tablets visible on the ground. What is represented in A Lady Standing at the Virginal then is perhaps nothing ore specific than a Cupid who greets us, to frame the woman's gaze as amorous. Vermeer's Cupid does fit into a system of references within the painting.

Otto van Veen
Perfectus Amor Est Nisi ad Unum
engraving from Amorum Emblemata
Otto van Veen
Antwerp, 1608

Among the tiles at the bottom of the wall is at least one Cupid: the figure just to the left of the woman's gown, which is similar to the fishing Cupid in a print from Hooft's Emblemata amatoria (right). Hooft's emblem plays on the conventional comparison of courtship to fishing. In Vermeer's Cupid tile, the fishing rod is visible, the proportions of the figure are consistent with Cupid, and the dark shape on his back can only be his stubby wings. (The same figure may be repeated on a tile to the right, partially obscured by the virginal's leg.) Prints like that from Hooft's book often served as patterns for tiles. Contemporary viewers who were familiar with these recurring designs on their own walls (right) would readily have identified the Cupid in Vermeer's tile. The fishing Cupid, moreover, is part of a broader aquatic theme in the painting. Another clearly legible tile, one to the left of the Cupid, depicts a sailboat. Water appears in all three pictures-in-the-picture. A blue patch in the lower right comer of the landscape on the wall denotes a sea or lake; so too does the blue-gray area behind the Cupid in the painting. Finally, the landscape on the inner lid of the virginal includes a waterfall in the right foreground. The analogy between fishing and love, as well as the myth of Venus born from the sea, pervades Vermeer's painting, perhaps even to the extent of the pearls around the lady's neck. Watery motifs also feature prominently in Delfs Cupidoos schighje, on the title page of which Cupid aims his bow at two lovers while seated on a dolphin.

a 17th c. Delft floor tile

Vermeer's Lady Standing at the Virginal (right) fishes for us, we fish for her, or Cupid fishes for us both. One vryerijboek advises young women: "Learn ...to steal hearts/ With Clavecimbel-playing." The empty chair is for us, like the viola da gamba in A Lady Seated at the Virginal. These two paintings are merely confrontational versions of the theme of the woman with a musical instrument, whose outward gaze in other paintings is probably no less amorous. The figure in A Lady Standing at the Virginal looks down at us slightly and invites us to take a position of even greater subservience--to look up at her from the chair as she plays. We approach her then as a supplicant, a Petrarchan lover. From the chair, she would be silhouetted against the glare of the window. A song from the Tweede Delfs Cupidoos schighje (a sequel to the original songbook) poses a similar contest of lights: ". ..how your God- like eyes/ seek to draw hearts in/ By your bright brilliance, which conquers all/Through which Appollo's rays stand blinded." Vermeer's lady seems to wear Cupid's bow as an ornament; the intersection of the bow with her gaze conjures the metaphor:

And you, Cupid...
...must not live unarmed.
For the littles EYES of my ROSELIJN:
They will provide little arrows for you again:

She is perhaps both a woman to be courted and Venus herself, to whom the beloved is often compared in poetry (the "white Mother of Love," as noted previously). Vermeer's faintly comic tone, with his cross-eyed Cupid looming triumphantly above us and the trace of a smile on the woman's face, recalls a song from Delfs Cupidoos schighje in which the foolish vrijer Pietje is confronted by, as he says, "a small little man with a bow." Pietje's female companion Trijntje warns him that he is in danger. The song ends with Pietje pleading for mercy:

Ay, ay, ay, dear Cupid
You must not slay me,
Your little arrow will hurt me so,
Stop, I will kneel before you

For a complete investigation of the painting by Pieter Groenewegen which Vermeer reproduced  on the lid of the spinet and in the painting in the gilt frame on the background wall, please access this very interesting article by Gregor J. M. Weber, who discovered the connections.

Unfortunately, the design of the "Hoogsteder & Hoogsteder" website (where the article can be read) makes proper bookmarking and linking impossible, so you must:

1. click: http://www.art.nl/  to access the home page of "Hoogsteder & Hoogsteder"
2. click on "read all articles online" link
3. go to bottom of page and click on "back to HoogstaderJournal index page" link
4. click on "read all articles online" link next to the the Hoogstaeder Journal No. 7, Sept., 2000
5. and then click on "complete article online" link under the "Painting discovered in Vermeer " caption.