Is Vermeer’s ‘The Art of Painting’ in fact a lost work?

Paul Taylor, a curator at London’s Warburg Institute specializing in 17th-century Dutch art, argues that Vermeer’s celebrated painting *The Art of Painting* (1666-68), housed at Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, may not be the work referenced in a 1676 legal document by the artist’s widow, Catharina. Taylor tracked 25 period descriptions of “de schilderconst” (the art of painting) and found they all depict allegorical personifications of painting, not studio scenes like Vermeer’s composition. He believes the document refers to a now-lost Vermeer that could still resurface.