A Girl Asleep (Vermeer)

Infobox Painting|

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title=A Girl Asleep
artist=Johannes Vermeer
year=1657
type=Oil on canvas
height=87,6
width=76,5
city=New York City
museum=Metropolitan Museum of Art

"A Girl Asleep", also known as "A Woman Asleep at Table", is a painting by the Dutch master Johannes Vermeer, 1657. It is housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City.

This painting is the earliest indisputable work by Vermeer. The Rembrandtesque influence in this phase of his life can easily be ascertained from the rich and heavily impastoed pigments used in the painting.

In the left part of the composition is showed a table covered with a glowing Oriental rug pulled up in front. On it is a Delftware plate with fruit, a white pitcher, and an overturned glass or roemer in the foreground. At the far end of the table is a young woman asleep, her head resting on her propped-up right arm and hand; the left one lies negligently flat. To the right is the back of a chair, and in the distance a half-open door that allows the viewer to see into another room.

The theme goes directly back to Rembrandt. One of his drawings, "A Girl Asleep at a Window", at the Tuffier Collection, Paris, shows a very similar pose. This, and the type of model, were also adopted by Nicolaes Maes in his "Idle Servant", dated 1655, at the National Gallery, London, although there the maid sleeps on her left arm and hand. An identical stance can also be found in Maes's "Housekeeper" from a year later, at the Saint Louis Art Museum. It has been suggested that Nicolaes Maes stayed in Delft after having left Rembrandt's studio, perhaps in 1653 or even later, to move to Dordrecht afterward. In any event, there were ample possibilities for Vermeer to have had access to Rembrandtesque drawings, from a possible stay in the Rembrandt studio to Leonard Bramer and Carel Fabritius. The handling of the light, as well as the deep colouring and heavy paste in the execution, derives from Rembrandtesque techniques of the early 1640s.

Technical examinations revealed that Vermeer made major changes in the course of execution. He initially put a man in the second room instead of the mirror, and a dog in the doorway. He also enlarged the picture on the wall, which shows part of a Cupid in the style of Caesar van Everdingen, which is seen in other of Vermeer paintings. There have been various attempts at emblematic interpretation of the scene.

The paint surface of the still life on the table has suffered from abrasions and restorations.

References

[http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/verm/hod_14.40.611.htm Metropolitan Museum of Art webpage on "A Girl Asleep".]