How does this artwork elucidate its Vermeer?
One of these paintings was owned by Vermeer's mother-in-law, and it may have been an influence on one of his own early paintings on a similar subject, also known as The Procuress (1656). It also appears in the background of two of Vermeer's later paintings, The Concert (c.1664) and Lady Seated at a Virginal (c.1670). In both of these later paintings the blatant lust depicted by Baburen is contrasted with the genteel, but erotically charged, middle-class world occupied by Vermeer's women. The contrast between the images may also imply "a more general association between music and love". Vermeer sets up a series of contrasts between his own delicate, restrained style and Baburen's vulgar realism. According to Michael Wayne Cole and Mary Pardo this represents Vermeer's own move away from such low-life subjects. The older, cruder style of Baburen is relegated to the background, "eclipsing it with the more modern kind of genteel subject that Vermeer would soon paint exclusively".
The Concert Vermeer The Procuress Lady Seated at a Virginal