Ragazza addormentata

Vermeer painted this around 1657, early in a career that would leave barely more than thirty pictures. A young woman has dozed off at a table, her head propped on one hand, a glass of wine near her elbow and a door standing open into a further room. For centuries people read it as a small lesson about idleness or drink. What changed the reading was the paint underneath. X-rays showed Vermeer had first put a man in that back room, and a dog, then painted them both out, leaving the empty doorway and a mirror on the far wall. Recent study suggests that hidden man was an artist at an easel, arm raised, possibly Vermeer himself. Follow the open door into the dim second room and you're looking at the space he chose, in the end, to leave quiet and unexplained.