Femme au collier de perles

Vermeer made this in Delft around 1664, in the quiet corner of a room he painted again and again. A young woman in a yellow fur-trimmed jacket lifts a string of pearls by its ribbons, looking toward a small mirror on the wall by the window. Almost nothing happens, which is the point. Cool daylight comes in from the left and crosses a wide stretch of bare wall before it reaches her, and Vermeer lets that empty wall take up half the picture. He signed it small, on the edge of the table, with the joined letters of his name. The pearls, then, were costly imports, carried to Holland along the same trade routes that made the city rich.