Officer and Laughing Girl

Vermeer painted this in Delft around 1657, and the map on the back wall would have meant something to anyone Dutch looking at it. It shows Holland and West Friesland, a real printed map Vermeer owned and used in three different paintings, and it hangs there like a small statement of national pride at a time when the young Dutch Republic was prosperous and confident. The soldier sits with his back to us, his big black hat and red coat filling one side of the picture, and the girl faces the light from the window, laughing, a glass of wine in her hand. One thing catches the eye. The officer is only a little closer to us than she is, yet he looms enormous, his head nearly twice the size of hers. Scholars have argued for a long time about whether Vermeer used a camera obscura, an optical box that could exaggerate scale like that. The painting is one of three Vermeers held by the Frick Collection in New York.