A WOMAN ASLEEP
(Slapend meisje)
c. 1656–57
Oil on canvas
34 1/2 x 30 1/8 in. (87.6 x 76.5 cm.)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Bequest of Benjamin Altman
"In 'A Girl Asleep,' the 'Soldier and Laughing Girl' and the Dresden 'Letter Reader' Vermeer's matter is stated in a vocabulary not essentially different from that current among his contemporaries. In 'The Letter Reader' the hands are modeled with almost painful attention to the known anatomical form; the same uneasy linear definition of these details appears in the Frick picture. Both reveal the painter with a manner which is the antithesis of that which he later developed. "
Lawrence Gowing, Vermeer, 1952
