Das Glas Wein

Vermeer painted this around 1659, in the Dutch Republic's confident middle decades, when a merchant's parlor was a stage for the small theater of courtship. A young woman sits with a glass of wine while a smiling man leans in over her, offering more. A second man slumps at the table behind them, out of the running. The scene stays deliberately open. We are never told whether she is being talked into something or quietly running the encounter herself, and the smile she turns toward us tilts the balance her way. In the stained-glass window at the left stands a figure holding a bridle and a square, an old emblem of Temperance, a reminder built into the very room that a glass of wine was a thing to weigh.