Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window

Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window, also known as Lady Reading at an Open Window, is an oil painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter Johannes Vermeer, completed around 1657 to 1659 and held at the Gemaldegalerie in Dresden since 1742. It depicts a young Dutch woman reading a letter before an open window, and for many years its attribution was lost, credited first to Rembrandt and then to Pieter de Hooch before being properly identified as Vermeer's work in 1880. After World War II the painting was briefly in the possession of the Soviet Union, and in 2017 tests revealed it had been altered after the painter's death; a restoration completed between 2018 and 2021 returned the painting to its original composition, revealing a painting of Cupid within the painting on the wall that Vermeer had originally included.