Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid

Vermeer painted this quiet scene around 1670, a mistress absorbed in writing a letter while her maid waits, arms folded, gazing out the window at nothing in particular. On the floor lies a crumpled sheet, hinting at a first draft thrown away, the only sign of drama in a very still room. The real drama came later. From the 1970s this painting hung in the Beit collection at Russborough House in Ireland, and it was stolen twice. In 1974 an IRA gang led by the heiress Rose Dugdale cut it from its frame, and it was recovered days afterward. In 1986 the Dublin criminal Martin Cahill took it again, and it stayed missing for seven years before a police sting recovered it at Antwerp airport. It now hangs safely in Dublin.