Focus on this artwork and explain the abstract.
Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window (Dutch: Brieflezend meisje bij het venster), also known as Lady reading at an open window, is an oil painting by Dutch Golden Age painter Johannes Vermeer. Completed in approximately 1657–1659, the painting is on display at the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden, which has held it since 1742. For many years, the attribution of the painting—which features a young Dutch woman reading a letter before an open window—was lost, with first Rembrandt and then Pieter de Hooch being credited for the work before it was properly identified in 1880. After World War II, the painting was briefly in possession of the Soviet Union. In 2017, tests revealed that the painting had been altered after the painter's death.
The painting was laboriously restored to its original composition between 2018 and 2021 using scalpel and microscope. It now shows Cupid in a “painting within a painting” on the wall, and since the restoration, hangs at the museum in Dresden as Vermeer painted it.
Dresden Pieter de Hooch Johannes Vermeer Rembrandt Cupid Dutch Golden Age painter Gemäldegalerie oil painting World War II