Proof of Seventeenth-century air air pollution has helped date a uncommon Vermeer portray. Conservation of Younger Lady seated at a Virginal has revealed the presence of feldspar particles between layers of paint. These deposits in all probability got here from the manufacturing of Delftware ceramics within the artist’s dwelling city.
The newly conserved Younger Lady seated at a Virginal has simply gone on show in an exhibition of the gathering of the American entrepreneur Thomas Kaplan. From Rembrandt to Vermeer: Masterpieces from The Leiden Assortment runs till 24 August at Amsterdam’s H’ART Museum (Kaplan named it the Leiden Assortment after Rembrandt’s birthplace). The Amsterdam present includes 75 works, together with no fewer than 18 Rembrandts, and the Vermeer gives the climax within the last room.
Younger Lady seated at a Virginal is the one one of many 37 genuine Vermeers which stays in non-public palms. Because the Nineteen Forties its attribution had been broadly doubted, however the portray was completely examined simply earlier than its public sale at Sotheby’s in 2004 and since then it has received virtually common acceptance amongst Dutch Seventeenth-century curators.
Kaplan revealed to The Artwork Newspaper that he had positioned the primary bid on the 2004 public sale, however the value soared and at £16m it went to the Las Vegas on line casino boss Steve Wynn. On the day of the public sale, Kaplan instructed a supplier buddy: “Sooner or later I’ll personal that portray.” When Wynn wanted to promote the Vermeer 4 years later, Kaplan and his spouse Daphne Recanati had been in a position to purchase it (together with Rembrandt’s Self-portrait with shaded Eyes, 1634).
Final 12 months they’d the Vermeer examined and cleaned by the conservator David Bull (who died on 28 December 2024). Kaplan had referred to as for a delicate therapy: “I need to see [the work of] the artist, not the restorer,” he says.
The presence of feldspar particles has helped clarify the sequence of how Vermeer accomplished the image. He completed the fundamental composition in round 1670-72, presumably leaving it saved in his studio within the centre of Delft. It was then that feldspar particles within the air fell onto the image’s floor.
Arthur Wheelock, a former curator at Washington DC’s Nationwide Gallery of Artwork and now Kaplan’s senior assortment adviser, believes that it was in 1675 that Vermeer added the yellow scarf over what had been a bodice. Stylistically, the modelling of the scarf seems to have been finished in the same method to that in A Younger Lady seated on the Virginal in London’s Nationwide Gallery, which Wheelock dates to Vermeer’s final years.
Wheelock means that the alteration was made due to a change in feminine style: “The scarf might mirror a distinct fashion of costume that grew to become trendy after the French invasion of the Netherlands [in 1672], but it surely additionally gave the younger lady a timeless, classical look”.
An intriguing query is whether or not Vermeer added the scarf on his personal initiative or following a request from a purchaser. The establish of the unique proprietor stays unknown, though it may effectively have been his fellow Delft residents Pieter van Ruijven and his spouse Maria de Knuijt, who had been the artist’s main patrons.
Till lately the Kaplan portray had been thought of to have been accomplished between 1670-72, dates given within the Rijksmuseum’s extremely profitable retrospective in 2023. That courting has now been revised, with Wheelock stating it as 1670-75. Vermeer died on 15 December 1675 and Younger Lady seated at a Virginal is almost definitely his last image.
Following Bull’s conservation therapy there have been delicate adjustments to the portray. As Kaplan places it, “the nuances, the shadow, the tonal composition all simply got here out, I used to be amazed, we merely took away what was not Vermeer.” The modelling of the folds within the white satin costume are actually extra obvious. Elimination of later overpaint on the lady’s lips and eyebrows offers her a friendlier expression.
Vermeer’s Younger Lady seated at a Virginal in its previous gilt body (left) and new one Courtesy of the Leiden Assortment
Younger Lady seated at a Virginal has additionally been reframed for the present Amsterdam exhibition, with the present later travelling to the Norton Museum of Artwork in West Palm Seashore, Florida (25 October-29 March 2026).
Because the Sotheby’s public sale the Vermeer had been in an ornate French carved and gilt body. It’s now in a black ebony Dutch body of the late Seventeenth century. This improves the looks of the portray, for the reason that easier body is much less distracting and places higher emphasis on Vermeer’s composition.
One thriller stays: who’s the lady within the Kaplan portray? Was she a member of the family, a buddy or a mannequin? Whoever she was, she appears to have been somebody whom Vermeer knew effectively and who would calm down in his firm. Within the portray, she performs confidently, not needing to face the virginal. She turns her face in direction of the viewer, taking part in for us.
