Raiders took the same canvas out of a country house twice, a false signature covered his own until 1885, and scans found a basket he had painted out of a floor. Twelve follow, ending with the picture everyone knows.
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Twenty Years in One Small City
Johannes Vermeer is known for fewer than forty pictures. Most show one or two people in a quiet interior with light falling from a window, and he made them over about twenty years in the small Dutch city where he was born and died.
Because so little happens in them, small decisions carry each picture, and X-rays and infrared scans now show how often he changed his mind. He painted out whole objects and enlarged one that mattered.
The twelve follow his working life, from a goddess painted at about twenty-one to the pictures of his last years, and mix the ones people search for first with several that are rarely discussed.
12. Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid (about 1670)
While a lady in a yellow jacket writes at a table, her maid stands behind her, looking out through a leaded window. Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid was stolen twice from the same Irish country house, twelve years apart.
In April 1974 a gang left Russborough House in under ten minutes with 19 paintings. The second raid, in May 1986, took 18, the Vermeer again among them, and this time it stayed missing for seven years.
It reappeared in 1993 in a garbage bag in the trunk of a car in an Antwerp parking lot, found by Charles Hill, a Scotland Yard detective who had posed as the intermediary for Middle Eastern buyers.
In the picture, the maid is the only figure shown at full length, and Vermeer gave her the central spot, arms clasped, looking out of the window.
At a Glance
Artist: Johannes Vermeer (1632 to 1675)
Painted: About 1670, Delft
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 71.1 × 60.5 cm (28 × 23.8 in)
Where to see it: National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin
About This Painting
Which Vermeer painting was stolen?
Several were. This one was taken from Russborough House in 1974 and again in 1986. The Love Letter was taken from an exhibition in Brussels in 1971 and recovered within weeks, and The Guitar Player was stolen from Kenwood House in London in 1974 and found in a churchyard. The Concert was stolen in Boston in March 1990 along with twelve other works and has not been found.
11. Diana and Her Nymphs (about 1653 to 1654)
In a dark clearing, a kneeling woman washes the foot of a seated goddess who wears a crescent moon on her head, while a dog watches from the left. Diana and Her Nymphs was sold at auction in Paris in 1876 as the work of Nicolaes Maes, a pupil of Rembrandt, and the initials N.M. on it said so. In 1885 a restoration revealed what they were hiding.