Young Woman Seated at a Virginalca. 1670–72

Johannes Vermeer(Delft 1632 – 1675 Delft)

oil on canvas
25.5 x 20.1 cm
JVe-100© 2017 The Leiden CollectionYoung Woman Seated at a Virginal
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How To Cite
Liedtke, Walter A. and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. "Young Woman Seated at a Virginal." In The Leiden
Collection Catalogue. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017.
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© 2017 The Leiden CollectionYoung Woman Seated at a Virginal
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This tenderly entrancing picture captures the quiet joy of a young woman

Comparative Figuresin harmony with her music. As she gently fingers the keyboard of her
virginal, she leans slightly forward in her chair, quietly and not about to
move, while looking out with a sympathetic expression, as thoughdesiring to share the dulcet sounds of her instrument with the viewer. In
style and execution this small masterpiece is similar to other of Johannes
Vermeer’s late depictions of young women playing musical instruments,
including Guitar Player, ca. 1670, Kenwood House, London (fig 1); A
Lady Standing at a Virginal, ca. 1670–72, National Gallery, London (fig2); and Young Woman Seated at a Virginal , ca. 1670–72, also in the
National Gallery (fig 3). As with these other works, it must date from theearly 1670s.

Fig 1. Johannes Vermeer, Guitar
Player, ca. 1670, oil on canvas,
53 x 46.3 cm, Kenwood, English
Heritage as Trustees of the
Iveagh Bequest

In Vermeer’s oeuvre, music making always serves the purpose of
courtship. Much as with A Lady Standing at a Virginal , the viewer to whom
the woman looks out assumes the role of a potential suitor. The tightly
wound curls, red ribbons, and the strand of small pearls in her hair indicatethat she is a young lady of proper upbringing and fine sensibility. But it isthe expression, although abstracted as in some of Vermeer’s other lateworks, which suggests she is a real person with emotions and feelings. In
this regard Vermeer was indebted to Gerard ter Borch (1617–81)[1] and,like Ter Borch, to the women who shared his private world.
This painting has only recently been reintegrated into Vermeer’s oeuvre
after having been removed from the public’s eye for many years. Not only
the subject matter, but also the modeling of the satin skirt, the reflective
front of the virginal, the shape of the music stand, and the radiant whiteFig 2. Johannes Vermeer, A Lady
Standing at a Virginal, ca.
1670–72, oil on canvas, 51.8 x
45.2 cm,The National Gallery,
London, Bought, 1892
(NG1383), © National Gallery,
London / Art Resource, NY

wall are all executed with the subtleties characteristic of Vermeer’s latepaintings. Lawrence Gowing was particularly struck by the distinctive
rendering of “the hands, the instrument and the space and light aroundthem.”[2]Technical examinations have established many similarities in the materials
and techniques found in this painting and in other of Vermeer’s late works.
The pale brown ground was applied in two layers, and is identical incomposition and application to the ground layers in the London paintings.
Natural ultramarine (lapis lazuli) serves in the final paint layers not only tocolor blue motifs (as in the back of the chair) but also to lend a coolluminosity to the background plane and to the highlights on the forearms.

Fig 3. Johannes Vermeer, Young
Woman Seated at a Virginal, ca.
1670–72, oil on canvas, 51.5 x
45.6 cm,The National Gallery,
London, Salting Bequest, 1910
© 2017 The Leiden CollectionYoung Woman Seated at a Virginal
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Vermeer used a green pigment in the shadows on the face, as he did in
the London and Kenwood paintings. Finally, the orthogonal lines of the(NG2568), © National Gallery,
London / Art Resource, NY

virginal were evidently snapped onto the primed or underpainted canvas
by using chalked strings running to a pin stuck in the canvas at a point
coincident with the woman’s shoulder.[3]Studies on canvas weaves, undertaken in 2011 by C. Richard Johnson ofCornell University and Don H. Johnson of Rice University, havedetermined that this work is painted on a canvas cut from the same bolt as
Vermeer’s Lacemaker in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, ca. 1669–70 (fig4).[4] This information suggests that Vermeer used this bolt for this latergroup of paintings. At his death in 1675 Vermeer left “ten painter’scanvases” among the supplies in his studio.[5] These were most likely
stretched and primed but otherwise unpainted. Paintings from the samebolt of canvas, thus, could have a range of dates depending on how
quickly the artist worked and used up his materials at hand, and, forstylistic reasons, it is likely that Young Woman Seated at a Virginal dates

Fig 4. Johannes
Vermeer, Lacemaker, ca.
1669–70, oil on canvas, 23.9 x
20.5 cm, Musée du Louvre,
Paris, Gianni Dagli Orti / The Art
Archive at Art Resource, NYa few years after Lacemaker.
Despite this painting’s many stylistic and thematic connections toVermeer’s late works, the somewhat wooden appearance of the large
yellow shawl covering the upper portion of the woman’s body is awkward
both in its shape and in its modeling. The sharp edges to the folds arequite different from Vermeer’s more nuanced manner of painting, as seen,for example, in the shimmering quality of her white satin dress. It is largely
because of the unsatisfactory character of this shawl that the attribution to
the artist has been contested in the past. X-radiographs, however, haveshown that beneath this shawl is a fully realized garment, with an
intricately designed sleeve, that leads gracefully from the neck to theFig 5. X-radiograph of Young
Woman Seated at a
Virginal, JVe-100

woman’s arms (fig 5). The skirt came up in gathered folds to the waist,and the broad swag of drapery from the elbows to the back of the chair
was not present originally. Pigment analysis has also determined that thisundergarment was executed with a different mixture of lead-tin yellow
paint than that of the shawl. The probability, thus, is that the shawl was alater addition, likely executed shortly after Vermeer’s death. A similar
situation occurs with Woman with a Flute in the National Gallery of Art,
Washington, D.C., which also seems to have been reworked after
Vermeer’s death.

© 2017 The Leiden CollectionYoung Woman Seated at a Virginal
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Much of the magic of Vermeer’s paintings arises from the visual restraintof his images, which gives them a timeless character despite theimmediacy of his scenes. Here Vermeer has focused in on the woman andher instrument, giving the viewer no hint of the character of the room inwhich she sits other than for the simple white wall behind her. All of ourattention, thus, is directed to her, and she responds in kind. This powerfulhuman connection holds us in place, and find ourselves drawn into her
world and imagining the quiet rhythms of the music she plays.[6]- Walter A. Liedtke and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.

© 2017 The Leiden CollectionYoung Woman Seated at a Virginal
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Endnotes
1. Vermeer and Ter Borch likely knew one another. See the biographies of Vermeer and Ter
Borch in this catalogue.
2. Lawrence Gowing, letter to Marlborough Fine Art, London, in 1959, quoted in Libby Sheldon
and Nicola Costaras, “Johannes Vermeer’s Young Woman Seated at a Virginal,” Burlington
Magazine 148 (2006): 90.
3. Conservator Jørgen Wadum reported 13 cases of a pinhole at the vanishing point incanvases by Vermeer, in his article “Vermeer in Perspective,” in Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.
Johannes Vermeer (Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis; Washington D.C., National Gallery ofArt) (New Haven and London, 1995), 67, 71. In later reports Wadum has cited 17 examples(personal communication to the Walter Liedtke, 6 July 2009).
4. Walter Liedtke, C. Richard Johnson Jr., and Don H. Johnson, “Canvas Matches in Vermeer:
A Case Study in the Computer Analysis of Fabric Supports,” Metropolitan Museum Journal
47 (2012): 101–8.
5. John Michael Montias, Vermeer and His Milieu: A Web of Social History (Princeton, 1989),
341, under doc. 364.
6. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century: The Collection of the
National Gallery of Art, Systematic Catalogue (New York and Oxford, 1995), 387–93, ill.

ProvenancePossibly Pieter Claesz. van Ruijven (1624–74), Delft; possibly by inheritance to his son-inlaw, Jacob Dissius (his sale, Amsterdam, 16 May 1696, no. 37).
Possibly Wessel Ryers (his sale, Amsterdam, 21 September 1814, no. 93 [30 florins toWillem Gruyter]).
Alfred Beit (1853–1906), London, probably acquired in the 1890s; by inheritance to his
brother Otto Beit (1865–1930) by 1904; by inheritance to his son, Sir Alfred Lane Beit
(1903–94), Blessington, Ireland [Marlborough Fine Art, London, 1960, to Baron Frédéric
Rolin, Brussels].
Baron Frédéric Rolin, Brussels (d. 2001), acquired in 1960, by descent to his heirs until 2004
(sale, Sotheby’s, London, 7 July 2004, no. 8 [to Steve Wynn]).
Steve Wynn Collection, Las Vegas, 2004 [Otto Naumann Ltd., New York].
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2008.
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Exhibition History
London, Burlington Fine Arts Club, Winter Exhibition, “Catalogue of a Collection of Pictures,
Decorative Furniture and Other Works of Art,” 1907, 4, no. 13 [lent by Otto Beit].
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Vermeer and the Delft School,” 8 March–27 May
2001; London, National Gallery, 20 June–16 September 2001 [not in the catalogue; lent byBaron Frédéric Rolin].
Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, “A Young Woman Seated at the Virginals byJohannes Vermeer,” 11 August 2004–1 March 2005 [lent by Steve Wynn].
Tokyo, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum, “Vermeer and the Delft Style,” 2 August–14 December
2008 [lent by the present owner].
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, on loan with the permanent collection, 29 December
2008–30 November 2009 [lent by the present owner].
Norfolk, Virginia, Chrysler Museum of Art, June–December 2010 [lent by the present owner].
Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, “Vermeer’s Women: Secrets and Silence,” 17 September
2011–15 January 2012, no. 28 [lent by the present owner].
Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, on loan with the permanent collection, January–September
2012 [lent by the present owner].
Rome, Scuderie del Quirinale, “Johannes Vermeer and the Golden Age of Dutch Art,”
October 2012–January 2013 [lent by present owner].
Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, on loan with the permanent collection, January–June 2013
[lent by the present owner].
London, National Gallery, “Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love and Leisure,” 25 June–8
September 2013 [lent by the present owner].
Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, “Vermeer’s Young Woman Seated at a Virginal ,”26 October 2013–21 September 2014 [lent by the present owner].
Raleigh, North Carolina Museum of Art, “Small Treasures: Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals, andTheir Contemporaries,” 26 October 2014–4 January 2015; Birmingham, Birmingham
Museum of Art, 4 February 2015–26 April 2015, no. 44 [lent by the present owner].
Dallas, Dallas Museum of Art, “Vermeer Suite: Music in 17th-Century Dutch Painting,” 17January–21 August 2016 [lent by the present owner].
Paris, Musée du Louvre, “Vermeer et les maîtres de la peinture de genre,” 20 February-22
May 2017 [lent by the present owner].
Beijing, National Museum of China, “Rembrandt and His Time: Masterpieces from The© 2017 The Leiden CollectionYoung Woman Seated at a Virginal
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Leiden Collection,” 17 June–3 September 2017 [lent by the present owner].

References
Von Bode, Wilhelm. The Art Collection of Mr. Alfred Beit at His Residence 26 Park Lane .
Berlin, 1904, 11, 58.
Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent
Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century Based on the Work of John Smith . 8 vols.
London, 1907–27, 1: 592-3, no. 24. Translated from Beschreibendes und kritisches
Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten Höllandischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts ,10 vols. Esslingen and Paris, 1907–28.
Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. Jan Vermeer van Delft en Carel Fabritius . Amsterdam. 1909,
29, no. 14.
Vanzype, Gustave. Vermeer de Delft. Brussels, 1908, 92.
Lucas, Edward Verrall. Vermeer of Delft. London and New York, 1910, 42, no. 37.
Lucas, Edward Verrall. “Vermeer of Delft.” Outlook (March 1910): 485.
Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. “A Newly Discovered Picture by Vermeer of Delft.” The
Burlington Magazine 18, no. 93 (November 1910): 133.
Plietzsch, Eduard. Vermeer van Delft. Leipzig, 1911, X, no. 34, pl. 34.
Dreyfous, Georges. L’oeuvre de Jan Vermeer de Delft. Paris, 1912, 28.
Von Bode, Wilhelm. Catalogue of the Collection of Pictures and Bronzes in the Possessionof Mr. Otto Beit. London, 1913, 3, 9, 85, no. 68.
Hale, Philip L. Jan Vermeer of Delft. Boston, 1913, 145, 275.
Gallatin, A.E. “Vermeer of Delft.” The American Magazine of Art 8, no. 10 (August 1917):
389–90, no. 32.
Vanzype, Gustave. Jan Vermeer de Delft. Brussels, 1921, 69, no. 33.
Hausenstein, Wilhelm. Vermeer van Delft (Das Bild Atlanten zur Kunst, vol. 10). Munich,
1924, 25, no. 38.
Hale, Philip Leslie. Vermeer. Boston, 1937, 159, no. 34.
De Vries, Ary Bob. Jan Vermeer van Delft. Amsterdam, 1939, 95, no. 43, pl. 66.
Plietzsch, Eduard. Vermeer van Delft. Munich, 1939, 65, no. 45.
Bodkin, Thomas and Goldscheider, L. The Paintings of Jan Vermeer . New York, 1940, 14,
no. 48.
De Vries, Ary Bob. Jan Vermeer van Delft. Basel, 1948, 68, no. 39.
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Swillens, P.T.A. Johannes Vermeer, Painter of Delft 1632–1675 . Utrecht, 1950, 63, 108,
154, no. 30.
Goldscheider, Ludwig.

Johannes Vermeer: The Paintings, Complete Edition. London,

1958, 144, no. 6, pl. 6.
Goldscheider, Ludwig. Johannes Vermeer: The Paintings Complete Edition. London, 1967,
133, no. 33, pl. 75.
Gimpel, René. Diary of an Art Dealer . Introduction by Sir Herbert Read. Translated by John
Rosenberg. New York, 1967, 224.
Bianconi, Piero. L’opera completa di Vermeer. Milan, 1967, 96, no. 39.
Gowing, Lawrence. Vermeer. London, 1970, 78, 157, no. 80.
Wright, Christopher. Vermeer. London, 1976, 15, no. 36.
Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. Jan Vermeer. New York, 1981, 45, no. 53.
Broos, Ben. “Vermeer: Malice and Misconception.” In Vermeer Studies. Edited by Ivan
Gaskell and Michiel Jonker. Washington, 1998, 27, 29, no. 14, 33, n. 58.
Liedtke, Walter, ed. Vermeer and the Delft School . Exh. cat. New York, Metropolitan
Museum of New York; London, National Gallery. New York, 2001, 403, 406, n. 11, 581, n.
46.
Sheldon, Libby and Costaras, Nicola. “Johannes Vermeer’s Young Woman seated at a
Virginal.” The Burlington Magazine 148 (February 2006): 89–97.
Sutton, Peter. Vermeer and the Delft Style. Tokyo, 2008, 190–2, no. 31.
Liedtke, Walter. Vermeer: The Complete Paintings. New York, 2008, 175–77, no. 36.
Binstock, Benjamin. Vermeer’s Family Secrets: Genius, Discovery, and the Unknown
Apprentice. New York, 2009, 281–82, no. 128, as by Maria Vermeer.
Wieseman, Marjorie E. “Young Woman Seated at a Virginal.” InVermeer’s Women: Secrets
and Silence. Exh. cat. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum. New Haven, 2011, 208–9, no. 28.
Sheldon, Libby. “The newest Vermeer: How technical research convinced the doubting
scholars.” The Picture Restorer 41 (Autumn 2012): 14–18.
Johnson, C. Richard Jr., Don H. Johnson, and Walter Lietdke. “Canvas Matches in Vermeer:
A Case Study in the Computer Analysis of Fabric Supports.” The Metropolitan Museum
Journal 47 (2012): 101–108.
Weller, Dennis P. “Young Woman Seated at a Virginal.” In Small Treasures: Rembrandt,
Vermeer, Hals, and Their Contemporaries . Exh. cat. Raleigh, North Carolina Museum of Art;
Birmingham, Birmingham Museum of Art. Raleigh, 2014, 224–27, no. 44.

Technical Summary© 2017 The Leiden CollectionYoung Woman Seated at a Virginal
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The support, a single piece of medium-weight, plain-weave fabric, has been lined.[1] The weave
has slightly thicker threads every centimeter in the vertical and horizontal directions. The verticalthreads run perfectly vertically while the horizontal threads slope downward when viewed left toright. All four tacking margins have been removed and there is slight cusping along all fouredges. There is a green wax collection seal and numerical inscriptions along the stretcher andtwo red import stamps along the lining.
In 2010, the Thread Count Automation Project (TCAP) determined weave matches link the
supportsof[2]

1669–70.

JVe-100,

dated

ca.

1670,

and

the

Louvre’sLacemaker,

dated

ca.

Johnson and Johnson’s report states: “Presuming Vermeer purchased canvas insizes larger than his paintings, a weave match is strong evidence that both, now separate,canvases were once joined and both in Vermeer’s possession. This argues for the authenticity of
one half of a matching pair to carry over to the other half of the pair.” This confirms L. Sheldon
and N. Costaras’s findings published in The Burlington Magazine (February 2006) that “apainting of a similar size to ‘A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal,’ the ‘Lacemaker,’ is on acanvas made of precisely the same type of rather coarse thread and has exactly the same threadcount. . . . So similar is the appearance of the two canvases that they could well be from thesame bolt.”[3]A light gray ground has been applied in at least two layers followed by a thin red-brown
imprimatura glaze.[4] The paint has been applied dark to light, although dark glazes have been
applied over the lighter brown paint along the drapery folds of the yellow shawl to enhance theillusion of depth. The composition’s perspective lines converge in the yellow shawl draped overthe figure’s shoulder. A previously filled and inpainted point in the shawl, below and slightly to theleft of the two white pearls along the figure’s neck, may be the vanishing point.[5]No underdrawing is readily apparent in infrared images captured at 780–1000 nanometers. The
images indicate the yellow shawl was applied after the vertical folds of the skirt were painted.
Dark pentimenti through the figure’s hands and wrists indicate the figure was painted after thevirginal.
The painting is unsigned and undated.
The painting was cleaned and restored prior to acquisition in 2004 and remains in a good stateof preservation.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. Narrow remnants of primed canvas remain along all but the left edge.
2. TCAP codirectors Dr. C. Richard Johnson Jr. of Cornell University and Dr. Don H.
Johnson of Rice University.

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3. The Burlington Magazine 148 (February 2006): 89–97.
4. From page one of the painting analysis report by C. Hassall and L. Sheldon, UCL Painting
Analysis Ltd, May 1997 (on file at the Leiden Collection).
5. Ca. 1 cm below and slightly to the left of the two white pearls along the figure’s neck.

© 2017 The Leiden Collection