Glass of wine - Jan Vermeer
Click on the image above to see a larger version
According to Walter Liedtke This interior is considered to be the first of the mature works of Vermeer's (2001), and his mastery of light and shade within a painting is very evident of this. Vermeer has captured the window pane so that it looks like you can almost open it and the light spilling into the room is soft and illuminates the young girl who is taking a small sip of the wine in her hand. The work itself is painted in painstaking detail and possibly the only mistake that Vermeer made in this work is in the receding floor tiles, the perspective is a little out. The young couple in the painting are shown bathed in light from the window and Vermeer is perhaps suggesting that they are more than passing acquaintances and the man having his cloak on hat on is either in the throes of arrival or departing, could he be pressing the lady to drink the wine so they can go out somewhere? In contrast the painting behind the young couple is dark and forbidding, this could be a warning that things are not all as they seem despite the light at the front of the painting, especially since the fact that paintings were often filled with symbology at that time.
The Glass of Wine
1658-1660.
Oil on canvas.
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemaldegalerie, Berlin, Germany.