A Lady Writing

A young woman in a lemon-yellow morning jacket trimmed with ermine pauses at her writing table, quill in hand, and looks up at the viewer with a calm, attentive gaze, the soft daylight of a Delft interior falling across her face, the pearls on the table and at her ears, and the heavy folds of the celestial-blue cloth. Johannes Vermeer painted the picture about 1665, at the height of his maturity as a painter of light, when he had turned from large history scenes to the quiet domestic subjects for which he is now beloved. The composition is a study in stillness and attention — the woman caught between writing and looking, the brass-studded chair-back and the dim painting on the wall behind her framing her figure against the grey plaster. The painting is held in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.