Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675)

Description of Jan Vermeer’s painting A Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window

Jan Vermeer was an artist from the Netherlands, a master of genre portraiture and domestic painting. Almost nothing is known about his life; much of his biography is based on speculation. In spite of this, he is judged by his paintings and called one of the great masters of the golden age of Dutch art.

He had no pupils, just a family and paints. In his paintings he depicted the life he saw around him.

"Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window" is full of detail. The table is covered by a blanket in picturesque folds. The window is enclosed by a decorative lattice with a simple pattern. A faint light falls into the room - an overcast day, spring or summer - the red curtain is thrown aside, fruit scattered across the table. A girl - young, hardly older than twenty - with elaborate hair is reading a letter, holding it up to the light.

Her face is focused and a little sad, as if the letter says something that saddens her. Perhaps her lover can’t make the date. Or he is ill and she is worried about him. One can only speculate, but the picture itself breathes peace and mild sadness.

But on the symbolic side the apples and peaches falling out of the bowl represent Adam and Eve’s fall into sin, and the open window represents the desire to escape, to change, to be free. Perhaps the girl is not really sad, but deciding whether to run away with her beloved, to leave home with him. Or everything is simpler and she just wants to lie down with him somewhere in the tall grasses, having escaped from the care of her parents.

The fact that the letter came exactly from her lover and not from her parents or girlfriend is also confirmed by the fact that in an earlier version there was a cupid behind the curtain, which was then hung up and hidden by the artist. The basic message, however, did not change. Love is eternal and oceans of passion can sometimes hide behind human faces.

A girl is reading a letter by the window. And of whom she is reading, we can only guess.