A Rare, Valuable and Beautiful Painting

... in the museum this afternoon.

The painting is by Vermeer, and is of a young woman seated at a virginal. It has just arrived here on a fairly short loan.

Isn't it really lovely?

Perhaps the best way to pass on information about the painting is to show this photograph of the explanation provided by its side.

In the gallery where the Vermeer was displayed are also a number of Dutch "genre" paintings that I like very much. The days of the grand patrons commissioning huge and flamboyant Biblical and Classical scenes had gone, and the Dutch painters made more intimate pictures, often of household scenes. Two that caught my eye were these of

The Foot Doctor

A Man buying Gin in a Distillery.

And, for something completely different, here by Roubiliac is what may be the model for his

Monument to Handel in Westminster Abbey.

The model is in terracotta and plaster of paris.

Culture on a Sunday, yet again!