Technical Description

The Love Letter

The existing canvas may not be original. X-radiography shows a closed plain-weave with a thread count of 16.25 x 14 per cm ².

The apparently double ground comprises a red layer followed by a gray layer containing chalk, umber, and a little lead white. Between the two is a thin, unpigmented layer. The red layer may be related to a transfer process.

The paint surface is smooth, with few individual brushstrokes discernible. The dark, gray tiles were painted first, and then the white tiles were painted before the gray tiles were dry. The chair and part of the scarf draped over it the right foreground were underpainted with red lake. The maid's blue apron was painted with a blue-gray underpaint followed by a mixture of blue and white with a final blue glaze The blue appears to be ultramarine, a lighter patch of which on the mistress' lap can be seen to extend under the bottom under the lute. The vanishing point of the composition is visible on the x-radiograph. The painting was cut off the stretcher during its theft in 1971. The resulting paint loss was mainly restricted to a band approximately 0.5 centimeter wide on either side of the cuts, although there are more serious losses in the top right corner and the center-right area. There is some surface abrasion.

* Johannes Vermeer (exh. cat., National Gallery of Art and Royal Cabinet of Paintings Mauritshuis - Washington and the Hague, 1995, edited by Arthur Wheelock)

signature:

inscribed above the basket:
(IVM in ligature)