The girl with the wine glass
|
| The girl with the wine glass |
|---|
| Jan Vermeer , 1659-1660 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 78 × 67.5 cm |
| Duke Anton Ulrich Museum |
The Girl with the Wine Glass is an oil painting by Jan Vermeer between 1659 and 1660 . The 78 centimeter high and 67.5 centimeter wide genre image shows a young girl with a wine glass in her hand and two men in a room. Anton Ulrich , Duke of Braunschweig and Lüneburg acquired the painting around 1696. Today it hangs in the Old Masters collection of the Duke Anton Ulrich Museum in Braunschweig, which is named after him .
Image description
The picture shows a scene in a room. In the foreground of the picture sits a girl with a wine glass in her hand. She looks directly at the viewer and smiles at him. A young man is standing next to her. He holds her hand as if to encourage her to drink the wine glass as soon as possible. Another man is sitting in the back left corner behind a table on which there is a wine jug, a silver plate with some fruit and a white cloth. He seems to have fallen asleep, perhaps from heavy alcohol consumption. However, the man next to the girl has his gaze fixed on her while he slightly lifts her hand with the glass. He is leaning forward in their direction. The young lady's dress is a bright red, it stands out from the other colors in the room. The clothes of the two men, on the other hand, are rather pale and thus fit much better into the color spectrum of the room.
In the background of the painting hangs a portrait of a man on the wall, which appears dark due to the shadow of the wall. There is a slightly open window on the left side of the picture. It is a leaded glass window with a colored coat of arms in the middle.
interpretation
The man seems to want to seduce the woman. Whether he does this for himself or on behalf of the man in the background is an open question. She looks to the side, embarrassed. The second man in the background shouldn't be able to follow the scene completely. He seems to have grown tired from enjoying the drink. Whether the drink is wine or an aphrodisiac , the citrus fruits might indicate it is not clear. The man in the painting in the background could be the absent husband, who looks admonishingly at his wife. But the man in the corner could also be the drunken husband, dazed and blind to what is going on in the room. But his portrait is still on guard. In the stained glass window one can see the allegory of temperance , temperance, a cardinal virtue.
Trivia
The picture has been adorned since 2017 on a German 70-cent stamp that was issued as part of the “ Treasures from German Museums ” series.
literature
- Norbert Schneider: Vermeer all paintings . Taschen, Cologne 2004, ISBN 3-8228-6377-7 .
- Arthur K. Wheelock: Vermeer - DuMont`s library of great painters , Cologne 2003. ISBN 3-8321-7339-0 .
Web links
- "The girl with the wine glass" on the website of the museum in Braunschweig ( Memento from March 29, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
- Detailed analysis of the image ( memento from July 19, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hans-Joachim Müller: Jan Vermeer's paintings in a new superb picture book - WELT. December 22, 2015, accessed May 20, 2017 .