Young Woman with a Water Pitcher: A Virtual Reconstruction

(part two)

When the two versions of the painting are observed side by side, the initial composition (right) appears overly complex, perhaps even cluttered. Consequentially, the woman's presence is less significant. Vermeer may have initially intended the map and chair to have a stabilizing role in respects to the young woman's open and slightly unstable pose. However, rather than being "embraced" the young girl seems to be surrounded and her movement constrained. By eliminating the chair and the direct contact between the young girl and the map, her presence is more autonomous and her graceful gesture is more evident. "The energy encompassed by the woman's body and gaze is now skillfully counterbalanced by the concentration of the objects on the right. Moreover, removing the chair and changing the position of the map, Vermeer preserved the purity of the white wall between the woman and the window, thus allowing the light to flow directly onto her, uninterrupted by any visual interference." Arthur Wheelock believes that the change in the map's position " may have also been determined by iconographic considerations."¹

The initial composition in the Young Woman with a Water Pitcher recalls the more complex spatial arrangements of the earlier Officer and Laughing Girl, The Glass of Wine and Girl Interrupted in Her Music. In all three the same kind of lion's head finial is chair faces the young woman in a similar position within the composition and a map or painting hangs behind them on the background wall.

Changes in the Other Pearl Pictures

Vermeer made significant modifications in the other pearl pictures as well, with the exception of the Woman Holding a Balance which may be the last painting of the pearl pictures although their exact sequence is uncertain. "Various arguments in favor of one or another chronology tend to confound one another. The problem remains alluring, for in this period Vermeer was at his artistic zenith."²

The initial composition (see virtual reconstruction below right) of Woman with a Pearl Necklace included not only a map of the Netherlands behind the standing girl similar to the one in the Art of Painting, but a musical instrument (perhaps a cittern) had been placed on the foreground chair as well. Both objects were completely painted out. In the same painting, a larger area under the table was also exposed portraying some strongly illuminated floor tiles.

The map in the Woman in Blue Reading a Letter was originally positioned three or four centimeters to the left and the standing young woman wore a different kind of jacket perhaps similar to fur trimmed jacket common to many other Vermeer paintings.

In all three of the modified pearl pictures mentioned and in many of his other pictures painted before the mid 1660s as well, Vermeer seems to have invariably subtracted some elements which he had originally placed in the composition. This process of formal simplification and poetic distillation reached perhaps its heights the Woman in Blue Reading a Letter and Woman with a Pearl Necklace. In the later pictures there exists less evidence of important compositional changes. Perhaps Vermeer was able to foresee compositional consequences more clearly from the beginning of the painting process.

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