Paradoxically, this painting is exceptional within the artist's oeuvre, both in its allegorical subject and for being one of the largest of all his paintings. We do not know what motivated Vermeer to produce it, but his family's efforts to retain it at a period of economic difficulty indicate that it was a picture of which the artist and his descendents were particularly proud.

The composition shows a painter, presumably Vermeer himself; painting a model who poses with a crown of laurel on her head, a trumpet in one hand and a book in the other. These accessories refer to fame and its perpetration through writing and would have allowed any contemporary spectator who was well informed in emblems to have identified the woman as Clio, muse of History. The mask which appears on the table is traditionally used as a symbol of imitation and thus of painting. The light hanging above the artist is crowned by a double-headed eagle, symbol of the Habsburg dynasty which since the 16th century had governed the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands that appear in the map on the end wall (and which still governed the southern provinces). As in the majority of interior paintings, it is difficult to know when an element should be read in a symbolic manner. The map and the lamp may, along with Clio, be further references to history or simply reflections of a taste for these objects which contained an element of nostalgia for the days when the Netherlands were united. Since Hultén called attention to the fact that the young woman represents Clio, there has been widespread acceptance of the idea that Vermeer is alluding in this work to the relationship between painting and history: history inspires the artist and, furthermore, according to the prejudice prevailing in artistic cirlces since Antiquity, is its most important subject-matter, entitling artists to a position of prestige within society.

Some recent authors, particularly Sluijter, have called attention to the fact that it is unlikely that, given the sort of works which he produced throughout his career, Vermeer would make such an affìrmation. According to this reading, the painting is not an allegory of painting's commitment to history, but rather a demonstration of the artist's skills, whose power lies in their capacity to turn the transitory into the eternal, and which the artist used to acquire fame and honours.

Whatever the case, the true protagonist of this painting is its illusionism. Vermeer was brilliantly capable of confusing real and fictive space with a mastery comparable to Bernini or Velazquez. The tapestry which hangs like a curtain to the left of the painting (upper right) is folded towards the spectator so that we enter into the composition. The curtain covers one corner of the map, a small part of the trumpet and part of the table and chair. With this device, the artist tempts us to stretch out our hand to completely reveal the scene and become physically involved with it. The manipulation of the perspective is also typical of Vermeer, who has situated a vanishing point just in front of the figure of Clio, beneath her right arm, in order to direct our gaze, like that of the artist, towards her.

One of the most important factors which contribute to the success of this work is the contradiction which it sets out between the illusion of reality and its pictorial physicality. While the illusionism is total in many areas of the painting, in others, such as the reflections on the lamp, parts of the tapestry and hair, the pieces of material on the table and Clio's white neck, the artist leaves the trace of his brushstrokes (lower right), calling attention to his manner of painting. The competition between the illusion of reality and the physical evidence of the brushstroke transports us into a different realm, that of Painting. In this space the brushstrokes seem what they are, touches of the brush, but applied within the fìctive space of the painting, and not on a canvas which is located various meters in front of the fìgures.

From the point of view of visual perception, one of the most striking issues in this pairiting is the spatial relation between the two figures. The painter is located so that his relationship with his surroundings is impossible to specify, given that his feet are resting on dark areas which are diffìcult to decipher, while the canvas which he is painting is not at an angle and therefore does not help us to understand the pIace which it occupies. The location of the table is equally ambiguous. The space between the silhouettes of the two lighting, fìgures becomes an independent one through the defìnition of the outlines and lighting, emerging from the background of the scene towards the picture surface. Vermeer's skill consists in making us perceive this tension not as a poorly resolved problem but rather as a pictorial issue, a means which allows us to come dose to the essence of Painting itself.

The Allegory of Painting is such a brilliantly executed work that it is hard for us to remove our eyes from the canvas in order to look at the context in which it was created. However, if we do so, we will appreciate to what extent Vermeer's art can be related to that of his, contemporaries. The interior scene in this painting, the light falling from the left, and its vertical format, the presence of the curtain, the sequence of geometrical forms on the floor and the ceiling which contributes to the creation of the cubic space, are all elements which also fìnd in the work of Dou, Maes, Ter Borch and De Hooch. The theme of the image of the artist is also a common one in painting of the period.