Woman Holding a Balance by Johannes Vermeer Postcard

Woman Holding a Balance by Johannes Vermeer, oil on canvas 1662 - 1663, is an enigmatic painting of a young woman holding a pair of scales in a darkened interior. A golden drape shrouds light from the window. Before her is a still life with blue cloth and a jewelry box overflowing with jewels and gold. Vermeer establishes a coloristic scheme of warm, golden tones contrasting with whites and cool blues, painted in expensive natural ultramarine pigments such as lapis lazuli. Behind the woman is a framed painting of The Last Judgment depicting Christ with outstretched arms. Scholars debate the complex symbolism of the painting, as whether the woman is a metaphor of the judgment of souls, or is she weighing earthly treasures in her balance. Johannes (Jan) Vermeer (1632 - 1675) was a Dutch master painter of interior genre scenes whose works were rediscovered in the 19th century. In carefully constructed, geometric compositions drawn in meticulous linear perspective, Vermeer explored the effects of light and color across human figures, objects and textures in sunlit, domestic rooms, building upon the optical discoveries and 3D perspectival depth of Leonardo and the Renaissance. Both a painter and an art dealer, Vermeer slowly produced a few of his painstakingly executed, richly pigmented compositions per year, living entirely within his home city of Delft, eschewing the fame of his near contemporaries Rubens and Rembrandt that he achieved finally in the modern era.