7th May 2019
Hidden Cupid resurfaces in one of Vermeer’s best-known works after two and a half centuries (theartnewspaper.com).
A hidden Cupid in Vermeer’s Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window, one of the world’s most famous paintings, is set to resurface on the canvas after two and a half centuries behind a layer of paint. During restoration work, conservators discovered, to their surprise, that the naked figure—which dominates the upper right section of the picture—was overpainted long after the artist’s death.
The naked Cupid on the wall as a picture within a picture seemingly being “the only clue suggesting a love story” according to Uta Neidhardt, senior conservator at Dresden’s Gemäldegalerie, and was first detected 40 years ago by x-ray, with the assumption that the artist himself had painting over it. With nudity not uncommon in Dutch Golden Age painting—think of those voluptuous Rembrandt nudes— (Google Images) with its Renaissance aspirations to the classical past, does this suggest decades later it was owned by someone with more Puritan values?
The plan now is for Dresden’s painting restorer Christoph Schölzel to restore it to how the artist had intended.
Schölzel’s painstaking work requires a microscope and a scalpel, which allows him to scrape off the overpaint without removing the original varnish on Vermeer’s version of the painting. The Cupid is so far about half-exposed—it is estimated that the work will require at least another year.
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