The Love Letter

Vermeer painted this love letter around 1669 or 1670, in Delft. He was in his late thirties, producing the quiet domestic interiors that make up his entire surviving output, and this is one of the most carefully composed of them. A woman in a yellow jacket trimmed with fur stands in a room, holding a lute in her left hand and a letter in her right. A maid stands behind her, holding a second letter or a piece of fabric. The two women are in a front room, visible through a dark doorway from the room where the viewer stands. The doorway frames the scene like a picture within a picture. On the floor between the viewer and the women, a broom, a pair of slippers, and a discarded piece of fabric. The painting is about the arrival of a letter, and the letter is a love letter. The lute in the woman's hand is the symbol of romantic love in Dutch 17th-century painting, and the maid's presence suggests that the letter has just been delivered. The woman's expression is ambiguous: she looks at the maid, not at the letter, as if asking what the maid knows or what she should do. Vermeer was a master of the doorway composition, a device he used in several paintings to create depth and to frame his subjects. The dark foreground room acts as a proscenium, with the women visible on a stage beyond. The broom and the slippers in the foreground are not random props: in Dutch genre painting, discarded household objects suggested that the woman had been interrupted in her work, and the slippers were a symbol of domestic intimacy. Oil on canvas, 44 by 38 centimeters, roughly 17 by 15 inches. Vermeer painted with a smooth, controlled surface, building the yellow jacket in thin layers of warm color over a light ground. The fur trim is rendered with tiny strokes of white and grey. The lute is painted with careful attention to its strings and tuning pegs. The light from the hidden window at the left falls on the two women and the wall behind them in a soft, even wash. The nearly square format and warm subject make this print work well in a bedroom, living room, or hallway. The domestic subject and soft light suit a room with warm-toned walls. A white or natural wood frame picks up the painting's warm palette. The 12x16 or 16x20 size gives the letter and the lute enough detail to appreciate up close. The painting is in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. This is a public domain artwork. We print it on archival matte paper at sizes from 8x10 to 18x24 inches, framed or unframed. The image is printed at full resolution with no cropping.