The Guitar Player

Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer painted this intimate scene of a young woman playing guitar around 1672, one of his final works. She looks out toward the viewer with a slight smile, her curled hair framing her face as her fingers rest on the strings. A landscape painting hangs on the wall behind her, and soft light enters from the left.

This is one of only thirty-seven known Vermeer paintings. The sitter may be his eldest daughter Maria, then seventeen or eighteen. In 1974, the painting was stolen from Kenwood House and held for ransom before Scotland Yard recovered it in a London cemetery.