Johannes Vermeer's A Woman Holding a Balance by Mary Elizabeth Podles

A Thousand Words

Johannes Vermeer's A Woman Holding a Balance

by Mary Elizabeth Podles

Vermeer's small canvas (c. 1662–1664) depicts a woman in informal dress, morning jacket, and untied linen cap, standing at a table in the corner of a room. On the wall in front of her are a curtained window and a mirror, and on the wall behind her hangs a painting. She rests one hand on a table; the tabletop supports a rumpled cover and a jewelry box, out of which spill strings of pearls and gold. In her right hand she holds a pair of scales.

All the compositional elements of the picture direct our attention to that hand: it is at the geometrical center of the picture; the perspective lines perpendicular to the picture plane (the top of the mirror, the table edge) converge at her hand, while the curved lines of the table cover and of her left arm make a semicircle around it. Light falling from the window picks out the placement of her hand, the little finger upraised as she balances the scale. The corner of the painting's frame sets off that hand, too; notice that the painter has raised the frame slightly (compared to the right-hand side) to leave a plain background behind the scales.

THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:


Mary Elizabeth Podles is the retired curator of Renaissance and Baroque art at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. She is the author of A Thousand Words: Reflections on Art and Christianity (St. James Press, 2023). She and her husband Leon, a Touchstone senior editor, have six children and live in Baltimore, Maryland. She is a contributing editor for Touchstone.

Print &
Online Subscription

Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!

Online
Subscription

Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!

bulk subscriptions

Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.

Transactions will be processed on a secure server.


more on art from the online archives

30.3—May/June 2017

St. Luke the Evangelist

by Mary Elizabeth Podles

32.4—July/August 2019

Sojourner Knight

on Single-Mindedness in Durer's Ritter, Tod, und Teufel by Anthony Costello

33.2—March/April 2020

Christ Chapel at Hillsdale

An Architectural Sign of Mere Christianity by Michael Ward


more from the online archives

16.10—December 2003

Calculating Christmas

on the Story Behind December 25 by William J. Tighe

32.2—March/April 2019

What Gives?

on Properly Rendering Things to Caesar & to God by Peter J. Leithart

30.3—May/June 2017

Three Trojan Horses

Insider Attempts to Disorient the Orthodox by Alexander F. C. Webster

calling all readers

Please Donate

"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand

"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor

Support Touchstone

00