Johannes Vermeer's 'The Art of Painting' (c. 1666) is a large, densely allegorical painting Vermeer kept in his own studio for the rest of his life. A painter — seen from behind, in luxurious doublet — works on a canvas of a model posed as Clio, the muse of history, in a meticulously rendered interior hung with a map of the Seventeen Provinces. Read as Vermeer's programmatic statement on painting as a liberal art, it is the single most important work in the Kunsthistorisches Museum's holdings of Dutch Golden Age painting.

Exhibition Venue

Kunsthistorisches Museum

Vienna, Austria

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