The Procuress

The Procuress (Dutch: De koppelaarster) is a 1656 oil-on-canvas painting by the then 24-year-old Johannes Vermeer. It can be seen in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden. It is his first genre painting and shows a scene of contemporary life, an image of mercenary love perhaps in a brothel. It differs from his earlier biblical and mythological scenes. It is one of only three paintings Vermeer signed and dated (the other two are The Astronomer and The Geographer). In 1696 the painting, being sold at an auction in Amsterdam, was named "A merry company in a room".

The woman in black, the leering coupler, "in a nun's costume", could be the eponymous procuress, while the man to her right, "wearing a black beret and a doublet with slashed sleeves", has been identified as a self-portrait of the artist; there is a resemblance with the painter in Vermeer's The Art of Painting.

It seems Vermeer was influenced by earlier works on the same subject by Gerard t…

摘自英文维基百科「The Procuress (Vermeer)」（CC BY-SA 4.0），暂时没有中文条目。