Dresden exhibits for the first time the restored Vermeer that revealed the hidden Cupid

The Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden will exhibit, for the first time since a restoration that revealed the figure of a Cupid, Dutch painter Jan Vermeer ’s painting entitled Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window. The work is one of the artist’s most famous because it is one of Vermeer’s earliest interiors with a single figure, and will be shown to the public from Sept. 10, 2021 to Jan. 2, 2022.

The painting was purchased in Paris in 1742 and became part of the collection of the Saxon elector Frederick Augustus II: it has been in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden ever since.

From 2017 to 2021 the painting was in the painting restoration laboratory of the city’s Staatliche Kunstsammlungen for in-depth investigations carried out by an international team of experts. During the restoration, a repainting was discovered on the wall of the interior depicted in the painting that could not have been done by Vermeer, but by another hand after the painter’s death. After removing the repainting, the underlying figure was found: a Cupid standing with a bow, arrows, and two masks inside a painting on the back wall of the interior. A painting within a painting.

At the same time, other old retouches and layers of paint were also removed; now the painting shows its original colors and lays the groundwork for a new interpretation on Vermeer’s entire oeuvre.

The exhibition is an opportunity to place Girl Reading a Letter at the Open Window in dialogue with nine other paintings by the artist related to it; these include Woman Standing at the Spinet, from the National Gallery in London, and Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden presents the largest Vermeer exhibition to date in Germany: paintings by the Delft painter will be accompanied by a rich selection of about fifty works of Dutch genre painting from the second half of the 17th century by artists contemporary with him.

Pictured, Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window (1657-59) by Jan Vermeer, after restoration that revealed Cupid. Credit Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. Photo by Wolfgang Kreische

Dresden exhibits for the first time the restored Vermeer that revealed the hidden Cupid

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