Diana and her Nymphs

This is very likely the earliest painting Vermeer left us, made around 1653 or 1654, just as he joined the painters' guild in Delft in his early twenties. It is not the hushed domestic interior he became famous for. Diana, the huntress goddess, sits in the open with her companions gathered close, and one of them washes the goddess's feet while the mood stays heavy and inward rather than mythological. For a long time nobody knew it was his. When the Mauritshuis bought it in 1876 the picture carried the forged signature of another painter, Nicolaes Maes, and only later did Vermeer's own signature turn up hidden underneath. It took until about 1901 for scholars to fully accept it as his hand.