The lady in this painting is not the typical modern pop-entertainer. She is delicate, elegantly dressed, and genuinely appreciative of fine music, as evidenced in her curious and almost beaming eyes. Quite fittingly, in her background is a painting of a landscape with lush growth and bright colors. Not only does it further reinforce the theme of the painting, but the presence of a "picture within a picture" is an interesting device in itself. Vermeer's work, to a greater degree than he may even have intended, is stating across the centuries, "Look, you crude post-modernists, at what I paint! Paintings!"
The Guitar Player
