Architectural interpretation

The painting is well ordered. The chair in the foreground, the heavy theatre curtain, the table and the Dutch map on the background, all of them provide a sense of space. It layered the drawing into different distances in order to emphasize the spatial relationship. The Vertical cracks on the map, chairs, diagonal pattern marble floor and the horizontal beams at the top of the drawing are strongly contrasted. Also the heavy curtain and white texture on the artist’s cloth balanced with the coming light from the hidden windows on the right hand side. All of above reinforces the importance of order in the art work. Also this is unquestionably the most dense of Vermeer’s works in terms of hidden intentions. He himself gave it the tile The Art of Painting and what we have is a kind of personal interpretation, or confession, or reading his art and himself.