Travels in Vermeer by Michael White Page A

lozenges of panes on the upper row, is among my favorites of all his magnificent windows. (My very favorite is the one in The Milkmaid .) The outside surfaces of the partially open, inward opening, right-hand casement shimmer with swirling, gray-green, platinum shapes as the light rakes over it, registering nuances as slight as the varying thicknesses of the faceted panes. Smudges, imperfections are passionately captured with Vermeer’s characteristic brew of verisimilitude and freedom. On the other, still-closed casement— blue in the center, gold on the sides—I make out the ochre ghost of a building in the lower left-hand corner. Once through the window, the otherworldly flow of north light is registered by one of Vermeer’s first bare walls, and is caught especially in the face of the bonneted girl.
    At first I see this as a traditional genre scene, which might be taken either as a girl visiting with her suitor in her house or as a woman in a bordello “entertaining” an officer in uniform. The male figure is viewed from the back. We cannot quite see his expression as he sits across from her at a table, but he wears a bright red jacket with a sash or shoulder strap, and a large black hat, tilted jauntily. Foregrounded as he is, he’s a disproportionately massive and shadowy shape. He looms between window and woman, taking up all the space and blocking the painting’s left center. It’s a radical perspective that suggests the use of a camera.
    She, on the other hand, seems tiny, almost childlike, and emotionally open. Besides the cotton bonnet drawn closely about her face, she wears the yellow bodice with black braiding (perhaps Vermeer’s most characteristic outfit), and a white collar. There’s nothing overtly disclosed here to make me think of the women who appear in the traditional bawdy genre scenes of the time.
    In fact, I’m deeply moved by the ways Vermeer shelters her, even from my own intense gaze. Rather than present her in the typical attire of tousled, open blouse with dramatic décolletage, he covers almost every square inch of her with the stiff, embroidered dress—only a hint of throat exposed—her bonnet tied tightly beneath her chin.
    The artist Jonathan Janson, on his website The Essential Vermeer, summarizes critical sentiment: “It is impossible for us to ignore the young woman’s radiant optimism … Her expression is so positively charged that even the officer’s reticence is effectively dissimulated.” This is what I expected to see in the Frick: another of Vermeer’s serene, angelic studies like The Milkmaid or Woman Holding a Balance. The real Vermeer, for me.
    Yet, as I keep studying her, the girl’s animated presence takes me by surprise. She sits leaning a little toward the officer, hands before her on the table—her right hand lightly curled around the stem of a full wineglass. What Janson sees as “radiant optimism” can be seen in another way: her face seems almost livid, lit with alcohol and desire.
    Or else she is flushed from the chill I can feel, wafting through the open window.
    Yet, her lips are full and defiantly—almost shockingly—red.
    Finally, I see something more: her left hand. There’s a single gesture at the heart of this painting—it’s how her hand lies relaxed, palm-upward, on the table, index finger provocatively curled toward the officer. The hand shapes a startlingly lewd caress—though all it holds at the moment is light and air—inches from the body of the wary officer.
    I can hardly believe it—but it does confirm on the simplest level what is going on between the two. Still, the painting remains unknowable, each volatile detail contradicting the next. The girl is seen in the most flattering, yet also the least flattering light possible—which is, for me, part of Vermeer’s triumph.
    The viewer is the complicating factor—I am the