Emily Toth
Vermeer’s Portrayal of Women as seen in Girl Interrupted at her Music and Mistress and Maid
Prompt: Go to one of the museums online listed below (Metropolitan Museum, Frick Museum,Rubin Museum) and pick one or two pieces to be the subject of a minimum of full 6 pages of text. The paper must include a visual analysis of the work under discussion , a photocopy if possible (and if you do not have one, a sketch of it is fine), relevant cultural and historical information and a discussion of the style. You can expand the discussion through as many related works as you like, but one (or two works) must be discussed in depth, if appropriate compared. Title
I chose two pieces from the Frick collection, Girl Interrupted at Her Music and Mistress and Maid, both pieces are by Vermeer. After analyzing the two pieces and researching Vermeer’s work as a whole, I decided to focus on the way Vermeer portrays women for my thesis. Vermeer actually has a small body of work and it features women much more often than men and when men are featured they are typically in a supporting role. He shows upper class women doing activities that require an education. The main idea is how Vermeer was one of the first to portray women the way he did, in a non-religious or sexual contact. Other focuses of my paper are the way he worked with light and how he created implied movement.