The Love Letter
c. 1669–1670 · Oil on canvas · Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
📦 Free shipping on every order — or upgrade to Express ($14.9) at checkout. Most orders arrive in ~4–8 business days (Express 2–4).
About this work
- Artist
- Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675)
- Year
- c. 1669–1670
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Original size
- 44 × 38.5 cm
- Collection
- Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
- Movement
- Dutch Golden Age
The viewer stands in a dark passage looking through a doorway into a bright room where a maid has just handed her mistress a letter. The lady, in a yellow fur-trimmed jacket with a cittern on her lap, looks up at the servant with a question on her face. On the wall behind hang a landscape and a seascape, and in the seventeenth century the sea was a common figure for love and the lover for a ship. Slippers and a broom lie abandoned in the foreground. Vermeer painted it around 1669 to 1670, late in his career, and the doorway device makes the scene feel overheard. The Rijksmuseum bought it in 1893 with help from the Vereniging Rembrandt. In 1971 it was stolen while on loan in Brussels, cut from its stretcher, and recovered within weeks, then carefully restored. It is the only Vermeer to include a seascape.
This exhibition-poster edition shows the whole work beneath original typography set in-house. The original is in the public domain.
Details & materials
Shipping & returns
Is this the whole painting, or a crop?
Is The Love Letter in the public domain?
What is it printed on?
When was The Love Letter painted, and in what medium?
What size works above a sofa or bed?
About this design
The Madten promise
A fine-art print
The same artwork as a clean fine-art print — the image shown large with a minimal caption.
