Une dame jouant de la guitare

For more than a century this small canvas hung in Philadelphia under a careful label: a copy, after Vermeer, by an unknown hand. The original it echoes is at Kenwood House in London, where a young woman in an ermine-trimmed jacket leans out of her frame, smiling at something we cannot see. Then in 2023, while the Rijksmuseum gathered nearly every accepted Vermeer in Amsterdam, a Dutch researcher put this version under fresh paint analysis and argued it might be the master's own work, worn thin by an old and aggressive cleaning that stripped its top layers. The claim is far from settled. What you can still make out is the light coming from the right, the blue cloth on the table, and the few books set beside her.