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Vermeer and the Delft School
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Description
This canvas was said to represent "a drunken, sleeping maid at a table" when it was sold, along with twenty other works by Vermeer, in the 1696 Amsterdam auction of paintings owned by Jacob Dissius. A few modern critics have questioned this interpretation. The dozing and probably somewhat tipsy young woman is indeed a household servant, overdressed for this occasion. Radiographs reveal a male visitor in the background and a dog in the doorway looking toward him. After this painting Vermeer often omitted motifs that would have made his works more obvious in meaning and consequently less provocative.
The pearl earrings are probably an allusion to Venus, considering that the fat little leg of her son Cupid appears next to the mask in the painting on the wall. The sleep of reason produces not monsters (as it did later for Goya) but pleasant dreams: "Love unmasked." There are other signs that virtue and duty have been left unguarded: the open door, the wineglass, and the bowl of fruit (tempting Adams in the neighborhood).
A Maid Asleep is the earliest painting by Vermeer known to have been in the collection of Pieter van Ruijven, a wealthy resident of Delft who acquired most or all of the paintings that were auctioned in Amsterdam in 1696. Perhaps he encouraged Vermeer's wholehearted turn to themes of modern manners in the mid-1650s. The artist borrowed ideas from several leading specialists—especially Nicolaes Maes in this case—yet sources cannot explain all the complexities of the design or such passages of observation as the flashing highlights on the door frames and the gleaming walls and floor.
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Description