Senhora Sentada ao Virginal (A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal / Lady Seated at a Virginal) - Johannes Vermeer

Senhora Sentada ao Virginal (A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal / Lady Seated at a Virginal) - Johannes Vermeer
National Gallery Londres Inglaterra
OST - 51x45 - 1670-1672

It appears to be dark outside this elegant room: a blue curtain covers the top part of the window, but the glass below it is black. The light which glints in the heavily dilated pupils of the woman seated at the keyboard comes from in front of the painting, an unusual effect for Vermeer.

Significantly, the picture hanging on the wall shows a prostitute flirting with a client. It’s particularly prominent, and this is important because musical scenes like this could be understood in different ways. Some were depicted as bawdy occasions, while others were entirely decorous. Vermeer tended to hedge them with uncertainties, but here the background picture gives an unusually strong hint, which encourages us to wonder if the keyboard player has more than music on her mind.

This painting may have been made to contrast with A Young Woman standing at a Virginal (also in the National Gallery’s collection), which seems to show an example of faithfulness in love.

Lady Seated at a Virginal, also known as Young Woman Seated at a Virginal, is a genre painting created by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer in about 1670–72 and now in the National Gallery, London.

Another painting, probably also by Johannes Vermeer known as A Young Woman Seated at the Virginals, belongs to a private collection shows also a young woman seated at a virginal. This painting and Lady Seated at a Virginal are quite separate works and are each known by alternate names and confusion between those two pieces may exist.

The picture shows a woman facing left and playing a virginal. In the left foreground is a viola da gamba holding a bow between its strings. A landscape is painted on the inside lid of the virginal, and the painting on the wall is either the original or a copy of The Procuress by Dirck van Baburen (now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston), which belonged to Vermeer's mother-in-law.

Because of its style, the painting has been dated to about 1670. It has been suggested that it and Lady Standing at a Virginal (also owned by the National Gallery) may have been created as pendants, because their sizes, date and subject matter are all similar. A recent study has shown that the canvas for the two paintings came from the same bolt. In addition, the ground applied to the canvas appears identical to that used for both the Lady Standing and the New York Young Woman Seated. However their provenances before the 19th century differ, and Vermeer sometimes varied a theme in otherwise unrelated paintings. In the 19th century, both paintings were owned by the art critic Théophile Thoré, whose writings led to a resurgence of interest in Vermeer starting in 1866. The painting entered the National Gallery with the Salting Bequest in 1910.

The painting is one of several works by Vermeer featuring keyboard instruments, including The Music Lesson, The Concert, and Lady Standing at a Virginal. Scholars believe these may all be based on the same instrument, built by Johannes Ruckers.