Woman Holding a Balance

In a cool, half-lit room a young woman stands before a table, holding up a delicate balance whose pans are empty, suspended at the exact center of the composition; on the table lie an open casket of pearls and chains and a scatter of coins, and on the wall behind her hangs a darkened painting of the Last Judgment, Christ enthroned among the blessed and the damned. Johannes Vermeer painted the picture about 1664, and everything in it is poised between weighing and being weighed — the light that falls from the window on the woman’s face, the justice of the Last Judgment behind her, the pearls and gold at her hand. The balance hangs motionless, and the picture with it, in one of the most serene and quietly profound interiors of the Dutch seventeenth century. The painting is held in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.