Young Woman with a Lute

A young woman turns toward an unseen visitor, her fingers still on the strings of a lute. The map on the back wall—a familiar motif in Vermeer’s interiors—suggests the wider world beyond the quiet room, while the warm light falling across her blue satin jacket anchors the scene in intimate domesticity.
The painting is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (accession 25.110.24), Bequest of Collis P. Huntington, 1900.