Girl Reading a Letter at Open Window brings us back to the wistful days when one might read a letter from a far away loved one and gaze longingly out the window between sentences.

Vermeer didn’t just paint women reading letters. He painted women doing a variety of very average things, which was seemingly his specialty. For example, some of his most famous paintings include Girl with a Red Hat, A Lady Writing, and Woman with a Pearl Necklace, all of which capture women during mundane moments.

Though the paintings may have been average in content, they are best known for their use of dots of light to create a realistic-looking lighting. The lighting technique, called pointillé, is what makes the light in the painting appear to filter through the window and illuminate the girl. Many critics have speculated that this unique use of light was inspired by an instrument called a camera obscura, which casts images onto walls (the camera obscura later inspired the invention of cameras). Other critics have even speculated that Vermeer used a camera obscura in the creation of his paintings to make the light appear especially realistic.

The painting’s journey through time is a scattered, largely unrecorded one, but here’s what is known: Augustus III of Poland purchased Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window in 1742, attributing authorship to Rembrandt. It would later be attributed to the artist Pieter de Hooch, before 1860 when a French critic, Théophile Thoré-Bürger, would correct both of these identifications. He would determine that the piece was actually Vermeer’s. Such is the uphill battle when it comes to identifying many of Vermeer’s works (there are only 36 known works in his oeuvre), which cannot be traced in any written form back to his studio. Instead, these decisions are left up to individual critics like Thoré-Bürger, whom common folks like myself have no choice but to trust blindly.

With contemporary x-ray technology, one cannot simply hide their mistakes from researchers these days--you could say, the whole process is getting more transparent. The x-rays allow researchers to essentially peel each painting like an onion, observing drafts and painted-over content. In an x-ray of this painting, a painted-over painting of Cupid was found. This painting within the painting would have appeared on the wall above the girl’s head if Vermeer had not decided to paint over it. Maybe Vermeer felt that the painting of Cupid might make the contents of the letter too obvious, or perhaps it just didn’t look good, but Vermeer decided to paint over the image of Cupid and leave the wall blank instead.

This painting also inspired the London photographer Tom Hunter, who took a picture of his wife reading an eviction letter, dressed up and posing exactly like the woman in this painting. In an interview he referenced the photograph as one of his favorites, indicative of a time in his life when he was bouncing from house to house getting evicted. Not exactly the same message Vermeer was going for, but a lovely tribute nonetheless.