A Young Woman Seated at the Virginals

A Young Woman Seated at the Virginals, now in the Leiden Collection, is one of the last paintings attributed to Vermeer, its authenticity confirmed after extensive technical analysis. The intimate, small-scale painting depicts a young woman at a keyboard instrument in a sparsely furnished room, with a viol leaning against the wall suggesting the absence of a musical partner. The painting's reemergence and authentication in 2004 added to the very small corpus of approximately thirty-five accepted Vermeer paintings.

The late technique shows some simplification compared to Vermeer's middle-period works, with less elaborate spatial construction and a more restricted palette. However, the handling of light on the woman's face and the virginal's surface retains the characteristic Vermeer luminosity.