Young Lady in front of a Mirror

The young woman looks inquiringly at the mirror on the wall. She wears an elaborately worked bodice of white silk with golden embroidery, gathers, and blue pearls around the shoulders. The gold-bordered silk bows on its fastening and in her hair are of the same colour. The young lady grasps her black skirts with her left hand to arrange them and free herself to turn her body towards the mirror, while her right hand, with a graceful gesture, takes a further bow to her décolleté, which is already adorned with a pearl necklace. Between her and the mirror stands a square table with an oriental carpet draped over it. On this are a silver casket and a letter with the seal broken. In the shadows of the room, a Black maid carrying another wooden casket with metal fittings has come to the table. Only the gentle reflections of light on her pearl earring and her exotic dress draw attention to this girl. Her slightly open mouth and attentive gaze at her mistress are a mirror of the lady’s fascination with her own mirror image. In the Netherlands, which engaged in the slave trade, African domestic servants were regarded as luxury goods that emphasised the great wealth of their owners. This picture was painted in the context of the intimate genre scenes that were highly popular in the Netherlands from the mid-17th century and showed people in their private sphere at home. They included the subject, both attractive and morally admonishing, of the young woman at a mirror. This item was the most important attribute of vanity, symbolising pride (superbia), and was usually linked to a warning about the transitory nature of all that is worldly (vanitas). In addition to Frans van Mieris, who tackled variations on the theme a number of times, other Dutch painters such as Gerard ter Borch and Jan Vermeer took up the subject of the young woman at her toilet. The sometimes striking similarities of motif, for example compared to Vermeer’s Young Woman with a Pearl Necklace, suggest close contact between the genre painters of this era. Alongside the mirror motif with its very similar arrangement, in both paintings a chair placed in the foreground and cropped acts as an element of composition to create greater spatial depth while at the same time opening the space towards the beholder. The red velvet jacket with trimmings of white fur thrown over the back of the chair is a fashionable accessory that gives van Mieris the opportunity to demonstrate his perfect illusionist mastery at depicting different materials. In this way, the artist also enhanced the intimacy of the moment, as the young woman is clearly still engaged in dressing, and presents her wide-open décolleté to the viewer. The man reading in the adjacent room, which can be seen through the arched doorway in the background on the right, is puzzling. Completely uninvolved in what is happening in the foreground, he is entirely immersed in reading with a gesture of melancholy introspection, his head supported on his hand. It is possible that van Mieris added this figure to the composition to symbolise a life led on the opposite principle to the superficial self-inspection of the fine lady in the foreground. Sarah Salomon| 200 Masterpieces of European Painting - Gemäldegalerie Berlin, 2019