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....

Comments

[wyrmwwd.livejournal.com]

It appears to me that she has lost a child. I can't tell what that is on the floor, but it appears to be a crumpled handkerchief. The room is otherwise empty, except for her and her off-balance chair. I would say this woman is experiencing what we in Pastoral Care call "complicated grief". The child maybe has been gone for years, but the loss of him still affects her every single day.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

The dead peer in at windows; the glass will not break. (Not yet: this isn't Bronte.)

The crumpled twisted scrap, I've read, is paper, with a signature.

Nine

[wyrmwwd.livejournal.com]

Fascinating

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Or could the child outside be her remembered self, or a child she never had or- even- mundanely- an actual child. I love how it doesn't explain itself.