Imán Woman with Lute Johannes Vermeer

Woman with a Lute by Johannes Vermeer, oil on canvas 1663, depicts a lady strumming a musical instrument in a lush interior of the painter’s home and studio. Natural light from a window shines across the subject and the wall map of the Netherlands in the background, with the foreground forms of table and chair in deep shadow. The painting’s realism, attention to detail, and jewel-like colors epitomize Vermeer’s prominence among the Dutch “Little Masters” of the 17th century Baroque era. Johannes (Jan) Vermeer (1632 - 1675) was a Dutch master painter of interior genre scenes whose works were rediscovered in the 19th century. In carefully constructed, geometric compositions drawn in meticulous linear perspective, Vermeer explored the effects of light and color across human figures, objects and textures in sunlit, domestic rooms, building upon the optical discoveries and 3D perspectival depth of Leonardo and the Renaissance. Both a painter and an art dealer, Vermeer slowly produced a few of his painstakingly executed, richly pigmented compositions per year, living entirely within his home city of Delft, eschewing the fame of his near contemporaries Rubens and Rembrandt that he achieved finally in the modern era.