Joven sentada al virginal

This is very late Vermeer, painted around 1670 to 1672, near the end of a short life and a small output of only some 35 paintings. The young woman has turned from the keyboard to look straight out at us, which is rare in his work. The clues are on the wall behind her. That painting of a naked Cupid points to love, and beside the theme runs a second picture the scholars have identified as The Procuress by Dirck van Baburen, a bawdy brothel scene of a lute player, a client and a woman demanding payment. Vermeer owned a version of that very painting, and he slipped it into more than one of his interiors. Music, a waiting glance, a hint of paid love. He leaves the reading to you. The panel came to London's National Gallery in 1910, in the bequest of the collector George Salting.