Jacob Vrel: Woman At A Window

[poliphilo]

 This has to be one of the strangest, most haunting images in Dutch art. It was the revelation of the Fitzwilliam's 2011-12  exhibition Vermeer's Women. Who or what is the child at the window? Dutch genre pictures generally explain themselves through symbol- a lap dog means fidelity- a cast shoe means abandoned virtue- but there's none of that here....