Proof of Seventeenth-century air air pollution has helped date a uncommon Vermeer portray. Conservation of Younger Girl 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 Girl 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 ultimate room.
Younger Girl seated at a Virginal is the one one of many 37 genuine Vermeers which stays in personal arms. Because the 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 gained nearly 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: “Someday I’ll personal that portray.” When Wynn wanted to promote the Vermeer 4 years later, Kaplan and his spouse Daphne Recanati had been capable of purchase it (together with Rembrandt’s Self-portrait with shaded Eyes, 1634).
Final 12 months that they had the Vermeer examined and cleaned by the conservator David Bull (who died on 28 December 2024). Kaplan had referred to as for a delicate remedy: “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 executed in the same method to that in A Younger Girl 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 vogue: “The scarf might mirror a distinct type of gown that turned modern after the French invasion of the Netherlands [in 1672], however it 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 might 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 not too long ago the Kaplan portray had been thought-about 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 Girl seated at a Virginal is more than likely his ultimate image.
Following Bull’s conservation remedy there have been refined 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 gown at the moment are extra obvious. Elimination of later overpaint on the girl’s lips and eyebrows provides her a friendlier expression.
Vermeer’s Younger Girl seated at a Virginal in its previous gilt body (left) and new one Courtesy of the Leiden Assortment
Younger Girl 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 less complicated body is much less distracting and places larger emphasis on Vermeer’s composition.
One thriller stays: who’s the girl 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 loosen up in his firm. Within the portray, she performs confidently, not needing to face the virginal. She turns her face in the direction of the viewer, enjoying for us.
