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In this radiant painting a young woman
gazes happily into the eyes of a red-cloaked soldier sitting across from her. Vermeer uses the sunlight falling on her to enliven her expression and to create shimmering specular highlights on the yellow strips of her sleeves and on the lion-head-finial chair.
Vermeer may have been inspired to paint this scene by Pieter de Hooch, who, in the mid-to-late 1650's, often depicted soldiers relaxing in a domestic setting. Vermeer, however, brought an added intensity to the figures' relationship by bringing them to the immediate foreground. He furthered this effect by exaggerating the differences in scale between the figures and by dressing the soldier in deep red, a color associated with passion and power.
Excerpt taken from
Vermeer: The Complete Works
by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr |
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