Performance is known as 'The Love Letter'. View through an open door to an interior in which a maidservant hands a letter to a young woman with a cist

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Performance is known as 'The Love Letter'. View through an open door to an interior in which a maidservant hands a letter to a young woman with a cister on her lap. On the back wall two paintings with a landscape and a seascape. In the foreground, two slippers, a broom, and a chair. Vermeer chose an unusual vantage point for this painting. From a dim space in the foreground, a glimpse is afforded of another room with a domestic scene. An elegantly dressed woman looks up expectantly at a maidservant, who has just handed her a letter. The seascape on the wall behind them may well allude to the epistle’s subject: during the 17th century, the sea was often compared to love, and the lover to a ship.

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Size: 4316px × 5008px
Photo credit: © Viktor Birkus / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No

Keywords: art, broom, chair, cister, domain, dutch, exhibition, gallery, history, interior, johannes, letter, love, maidservant, museum, netherlands, oil, paintings, performance, public, rijksmuseum, seascape, slippers, vermeer, wall, woman