Artibus et Historiae no. 27 (XIV)
1993, ISSN 0391-9064Up
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PETER L. DONHAUSER - A Key to Vermeer?
The focus is on the meaning of one symbolic detail in A Maid Asleep by Johannes Vermeer, and the resulting implications for the artist's relationship to contemporary genre painters. In the center of the painting, the near edge of an open door is interrupted by what appears to be the ring of a key. Visual and literary sources of the period link keys with domestic responsibility, duty, and fidelity, implying the privilege of access and closely associated with housewives and housemaids. Keys also had a sexual connotation, alluding either to lustful behavior or to female virginity.
The key was additionally used by Nicolaes Maes, Samuel von Hoogstraten, and Jan Steen as a metaphor for significance, a literal clavis interpretandi, intended to draw attention to a particular detail crucial to the understanding of a picture; and Vermeer could well have employed the motif in a similar manner.
