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Why Everything Hangs in the Balance in this Vermeer Painting
The delicate art of measuring life’s true value
The Durch artist Johannes Vermeer was a master of imbuing meticulous depiction with finely-spun symbolism. Few artist, before or since, achieved his degree of poise and subtly in the medium of paint.
In an image like this one, Woman Holding a Balance (c.1664), we feel at first anchored in reality, yet the dimmed light tells us there’s more going on beneath the surface.
In a typical Vermeer work, light pours in through an open window; here, however, the shutters are closed and a drawn yellow curtain softens and restricts the light. The hushed illumination singles out the woman, picking out the edges of her white cap and fur-trimmed jacket. The partial shadow over her face hint at an introspective quality, pertaining to an inner world of private thoughts.
In other words, the low-level lighting invites the viewer to look beyond the superficial: a suggestion that the painting holds a deeper allegorical meaning open to interpretation and conjecture…
