Jeune femme assise au virginal

This is one of the smallest things Vermeer ever painted, barely larger than a sheet of paper, made around 1670. A young woman sits at a virginals, a small keyboard, and turns her face straight out at us as her hands rest on the keys. For most of the 20th century scholars quietly doubted it was a real Vermeer at all. It was only after a careful cleaning in 2004 stripped away later overpaint that experts examined the ground and pigments and came round to accepting it as his. That study of the paint underneath is what moved it from a maybe to a yes.