The Music Lesson

A young woman plays the virginal with her back to us while a man stands listening. The trick is the mirror above the instrument: in it her head turns toward him, a glance we cannot see directly, and in the same reflection Vermeer lets the legs of his easel slip into view. The lid carries a Latin motto calling music the companion of joy and the remedy for sorrow, and a bass viol lies unattended on the floor, as if a duet is either over or yet to begin. For anyone who has had a lesson that was about more than music, it is the most quietly charged room on this list.