The Art of Painting

The story of The Art of Painting

A painter in a slashed doublet sits with his back to you, brush raised, starting on the laurel crown of a young woman who holds a trumpet and a book. A heavy tapestry is pulled aside so you can see in. A map of the Netherlands covers the back wall, and daylight comes from a window you cannot see. Vermeer painted it around 1666 to 1668 and kept it until he died; his widow tried to hide it from his creditors. It is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and it is the largest and most elaborate of his interiors.

This is a painting about light in a room, so it does well in one. The colors are the famous Vermeer blue in the model's dress, the black-and-white marble floor, warm brown wood, and the parchment tones of the map, with the whole scene lit from the left. It suits a study, a library, a living room, or a home office, and it works with Dutch, traditional, and quiet-modern interiors where you want depth without bright color. It is a tall image with a great deal of detail. The Large at 24 × 28.5 in is the size that lets you read the map and the chandelier, and the Medium at 16 × 19 in works over a desk or a fireplace.

Vermeer's The Milkmaid shares the same window light and blue, Girl with a Pearl Earring is his most famous face, and The Astronomer is the other Vermeer of a man at work by a window. More from Johannes Vermeer.

We print from a public-domain photograph of the Vienna canvas, in our own studio, without lifting the shadows that Vermeer meant to be dark.