Sleeping girl
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| Sleeping girl |
|---|
| Jan Vermeer , 1657 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 87.6 x 76.5 cm |
| Metropolitan Museum of Art |
The picture Sleeping Girl is an oil painting created by Jan Vermeer in 1657. It is now on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York .
Image description
In the picture a woman is sitting at a table. She wears a low-cut red dress with a lace-fringed white collar and pearl earrings. She has her eyes closed and is propping her head on the table with her arm. The oriental carpet that serves as a tablecloth is carelessly pushed back. There is a Delft ceramic fruit bowl on the table and a wine carafe on the table. This seemingly untidy foreground with the woman and the table contrasts with the sparse background, which is structured by the horizontal and orthogonal lines of a cut image on one side and a cut map and the armrests of the two representative chairs. Through the open door the view falls into a sparsely furnished room with two pictures hanging on the back wall.
With the help of X-rays has been shown that Vermeer had originally created a different background. There was a man in the room behind the woman and a dog in the door.
meaning
With the carafe in the foreground, Jan Vermeer is alluding to the enjoyment of wine . The woman's state of rest is due to this enjoyment, which is also included in the title of the picture. For example, when it was sold on May 16, 1696 in Amsterdam, it was called Een dronke slafende Meyd aen een Tafel ( A drunk, sleeping girl at a table ). In another sale in 1737, the picture was titled Een slapent vrouwtje, van de Delfse van der Meer ( A Sleeping Young Woman, by Van der Meer from Delft ).
The woman pictured is not a maid, but, as her expensive clothes suggest, a wife who manages the household. Your pose can be interpreted in two ways. First of all , it could be a gesture of melancholy, for example in the picture Christ with Mary and Martha . More likely, however, it was supposed to represent indolence, which was considered a mortal sin in medieval theology .