Project 2: Room and Narrative

Woman Reading a Letter at an Open Window, Jan Vermeer. (1657)

Background information:
Women preoccupied with their domestic duties, were treated by Vermeer with sympathetic interest. The single female figure, standing still and columnar, was one of Vermeer’s favorite motifs. This inaccessible woman, immersed in her reading, is further removed from us by the curtain and the table, which together forma barrier across the entire width of the picture. The curtain pushed to one side on its rod, opening the scene temporarily. The curtain appears to be a part of our world, separating us from the scene beyond. The figures in his work are placed within a tight framework made up of the most diverse objects. Between table and wall, window and curtain, the woman is immobilized in a block of space. Her head centered between top and bottom, left and right (a better balance between space and figure).
In Vermeer’s painting the location and function of the curtain are ambiguous. Is it attached to the frame so that it can cover the picture? Or is it a part of the room setting that is depicted? In either case, it contributes to the distancing that is basic to Vermeer’s art. The window gives a shadowy mirroring of her face. The reflected image is made up of flat patches of light and dark, a forecasting, perhaps, of the direction in which Vermeer will later move, depicting form by way of unmodulated areas of light and shadow.
Characteristic of Vermeer is the light wall. The treatment of light shows a strong contrast of light and dark.

Interpret/uncover the narrative embedded/implicit in the painting:
So little seems to be going on—a woman alone in a private room, few props, no motion, no overt emotion, the letter itself a slim ribbon of light. Vermeer makes no fuss about what she might be reading and why it deserved to be painted. He seems to lavish all the subtleties of a great colorist and observer on nothing—on nuances of reflected light, on the edges of a stark room of indefinite dimensions, on a surface almost compulsively divided by a window pane and green curtain. Its implied grid calls to mind the explicit cast-iron grid of the window.
Vermeer calls for single-minded focus on that one figure, and amid an amazing range of light tones, the letter is easily the brightest white. The woman was immersed in her reading. It might be a letter from one of her closest relatives sending from the battlefield. The woman’s face is unclear from either the original side-view or the reflected image. However, one feels the woman's quiet attention, stabilized on canvas by the dark pyramid of her lower body, but her eyelids are nearly closed. Somehow, the contents of the letter have presented a decisive choice. In a small red curtain flung casually aside over the window. A tapestry threatening upsets a tray of apples. All these create an atmosphere with quietness and even sorrow.

Narrative: "a rustic cottage for a gentle and quiet girl who lives on embroidering."

Site: "a slop facing riverside in a village with beautiful scenery all the year around."