Officer and Laughing Girl

Johannes Vermeer painted this Officer and Laughing Girl around 1657, an oil on canvas measuring 50.5 x 46 cm. A dashing soldier in shadow fills the foreground, his back to us, while a young woman in yellow dress leans forward into morning light, her face animated by a smile. A large map of Holland and West Friesland hangs on the wall behind them.

The woman resembles Catharina Bolnes, Vermeer's wife, who likely posed for many of his paintings. The soldier's dramatic placement uses repoussoir, a technique where foreground objects increase the sense of depth. Ultramarine blue in the wall's shadows produces sparkling light that has "no precedent in European painting."

Some scholars suggest Vermeer used a camera obscura, an optical device that may explain certain artifacts in his perspective. The map, a Willem Blaeu chart, appears in three of his works, suggesting he owned it. The painting once bore a forged Pieter de Hooch signature. Henry Clay Frick purchased it in 1911. It hangs at the Frick Collection in New York.