#overpainted

a recent restoration of this 17th c. Isaac Fuller portrait [L] uncovered a second, earlier portrait underneath [R]. Sold at Christie's London in 2021.

Johannes Vermeer’s ‘Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window’

Experts are currently uncovering an image of a large cupid that was hanging on the wall behind her.

More than two and a half centuries later, laboratory tests have determined beyond a doubt that the symbol of love was covered up decades after the Dutch artist’s death in 1675. Previously it was thought that Vermeer had covered up cupid himself.

The Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden in Germany has decided to remove the overpainting from the Dutch Old Master’s work, which normally hangs in the institution’s Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister. The museum plans to restore the work according to Vermeer’s original intention, which conveys that the young woman is reading a love letter.

The existence of the cupid has long been known by researchers. In 1979, an x-ray first revealed the image of the naked god of love, either in a frame or as a framed fresco within the painting. At the time, it was thought that Vermeer had overpainted the figure himself, preferring instead the resulting empty wall.

In 2017, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden’s painting conservator Christoph Schölzel began working on the famous canvas. X-ray, infrared reflectography imaging, and microscopic analyses were then re-evaluated in Dresden.

Vermeer painted relatively few paintings in his lifetime and died in debt. His oeuvre of around 40 works, includes Girl With a Pearl Earring, Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window, and Woman Holding a Balance, which are among the most well-known paintings in the world.

(via What a Break - Overpaint • Grapefruit Moon Gallery Pin-Up & Glamour Art)

Overpainted calendar art for The Louis F. Dow Calendar Company (1944)

Gil Elvgren

André Gilbert Schmucki (1967)

(c) Peter Schillinger

John Baldessari (1931 - 2020)

(c) Peter Schillinger

ROSES HAVE THORNS バラには棘がある