Senhora e criada

For a long time this looked like a Vermeer he never quite finished. Two women pause over a letter that has just arrived, the mistress in shimmering yellow caught mid-thought, the maid stepping out of a background so dark and bare it seems unpainted. Scholars puzzled over that emptiness for decades. Then scientific imaging looked underneath. Vermeer had started with a busy backdrop back there, a tapestry or hanging with at least four figures sketched into it, and then painted it all out, choosing plain darkness so nothing would compete with the two women and the news between them. The curtain we do see has faded oddly over the centuries because the copper-based greens in it decayed, which is part of why the whole scene reads as unresolved. It was among the last things Vermeer painted, around 1666.