The author of this painting has remained an enigma. No exact prototype for this composition of the Last Judgment is known. It appears, however, to be the work of a late sixteenth-century mannerist painter, probably of Flemish origin. One distinct possibility, kindly suggested by Dr. Pieter J. J. van Thiel, is Jacob de Backer (c. 1555–c. 1585), a student of Floris I, Frans and an artist who specialized in similar Last Judgment scenes. A distinctive characteristic of this composition, found often in De Backer’s works, is that Christ sits in judgment with both arms raised. Vermeer probably owned this painting of the Last Judgment. He dealt in works of art and seems to have used works from his own collection in his paintings. In the instances where we know the actual painting Vermeer owned, as, for example, The Procuress, 1622 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, inv. no. 50.2721), by Baburen, Dirck van, a painting that appears in two Vermeer compositions, his depictions remain rather faithful to the actual painting. He apparently modified the color schemes and the scale of the painting only to satisfy the needs of his composition. He probably made similar adjustments in the Last Judgment. For documents relating to the Baburen painting see A. J. J. M. van Peer, “Jan Vermeer van Delft: drie archiefvondsten,” Oud Holland 88 (1968): 220–224. For other instances of Dutch artists altering the dimensions of paintings within paintings see Wolfgang Stechow, “Landscape Painting in Dutch Seventeenth-Century Interiors,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 11 (1960): 165–184.

A review of the diverse interpretations in the earlier literature on this painting is enlightening. It reinforces the notion that Vermeer often chose motifs and moments that have dual implications, ones which the protagonists, as well as the observer, must struggle to resolve. Théophile Thoré (William Bürger), to whom we owe so much for his enthusiasm and research of Vermeer, cataloged the painting as La Peseuse de perles in Théophile E. J. Thoré (William Bürger), “Van der Meer de Delft,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 21 (October–December 1866): 555–556, cat. 27. Although some confusion existed in his mind as to the objects she was weighing in her balance (“La main droite en l’air tient la balance soulevée; dans les plateaux sont des perles et des pièces d’or [?]”), he recognized immediately that a relationship existed between the painting behind the girl and her actions: “–Ah! tu pèses des bijoux? tu seras pesée et jugée à ton tour!” (Ah, you weigh jewelry? You too will be weighed and judged!). Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century, trans. Edward G. Hawke, 8 vols. [London, 1907–1927], 1:586), on the other hand, described the painting as A Woman Weighing Gold: “In an interior a woman, wearing a dark blue velvet jacket trimmed with fur, stands weighing gold at a table with a blue cover.” Later, in “A Newly Discovered Picture by Vermeer of Delft,” Burlington Magazine 18 (December 1910): 134, Hofstede de Groot offered a somewhat more complex interpretation of the scene: “Her attention is concentrated on weighing gold, or possibly on testing the accuracy of her scales, for the purpose of weighing the pearls lying before her on the table; thus the picture is also mentioned by the title of A Woman Weighing Pearls.”Philip L. Hale, Vermeer (Boston and New York, 1937), 140–142, returned to this idea in his monograph on Vermeer. He cataloged the painting as “A Woman Weighing Gold sometimes called A Woman Weighing Pearls.”In his description of the painting he wrote: “Either weighing gold or testing the weights of her scale to weigh some pearls lying nearby, a lady stands close to an open window.”

Perhaps the most extensive analysis of the symbolism of this painting was in Herbert Rudolph, “‘Vanitas.’ Die Bedeutung mittelalterlicher und humanistischer Bildinhalte in der niederländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts,” in Festschrift für Wilhelm Pinder zum sechzigsten Geburtstage (Leipzig, 1938), 405–412. He reemphasized the observation of Thoré (Bürger) on the thematic importance of paintings within paintings in the Dutch and Flemish traditions, extending back to Jan van Eyck and the Master of Flémalle. Rudolph saw the scene of the Last Judgmentas a central clue to the hidden symbolism of this painting, which he entitled The Pearlweigher. To help interpret the symbolism he emphasized that pearls and mirrors often had vanitas connotations, ones that were strengthened in the context of a scene of the Last Judgment. Indeed, he saw the woman as a personification of Vanitas. Rudolph noted, however, that the scales that the woman was holding were empty.

P. T. A. Swillens, Johannes Vermeer: Painter of Delft, 1632–1675 (Utrecht, 1950), 105, also called the painting Girl Weighing Pearls but did not emphasize the vanitas nature of the scene as explicitly as did Rudolph. He wrote: “She endeavours to adjust her small scales, and is concentrating on this matter. . . . The thought of ‘The Judgment’ compels her to adjust the balance to accuracy.” Lawrence Gowing, Vermeer (London, 1952), 135, offered yet another interpretation. Entitling the painting A Lady Weighing Gold, he wrote: “In this painting a connection between the lady, who seems to be weighing pearls against gold, and the painting that hangs on the wall behind her turns the incident into a fanciful allegory of the Last Judgment.” He then added: “she takes on something of the character of Saint Michael, the weigher of souls in the part of the Last Judgment which is hidden.”

Albert P. de Mirimonde, “Les Sujets musicaux chez Vermeer de Delft,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 57 (January 1961): 29, wrote about the symbolism of this painting:

Now, in the case of the pearl weigher, Vermeer became moralist. Behind the beautiful woman, he placed a large painting whose meaning is full of threats: a Last Judgement. Who knows if these beautiful necklaces from the East will not be weighing very heavily in the balance of the Archangel? [translated by Jennifer Henel, 01/23/2012, from the French: Or pour une fois, dans la peseuse de perles, Vermeer s’est fait moraliste. Derrière la jolie femme, il a placé un grand tableau dont la signification est pleine de menaces: un jugement dernier. Qui sait si ces colliers d’un si bel orient ne seront pas d’un poids bien lourd dans la balance de l’Archange?]

Ludwig Goldscheider, Jan Vermeer: The Paintings (London, 1958), 38, searching for the symbolism of the painting wrote: “If pearls can be the embodiment of earthly, transient beauty, how are we to interpret the picture of the Last Judgment behind the Lady Weighing Pearls? Vermeer’s symbolism is not hard to understand.”

This was proposed by Herbert Rudolph, “‘Vanitas.’ Die Bedeutung mittelalterlicher und humanistischer Bildinhalte in der niederländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts,” in Festschrift für Wilhelm Pinder zum sechzigsten Geburtstage (Leipzig, 1938), 409.Actually since Christian iconography treats the pearl, the most precious jewel, as a symbol of salvation, it would be unusual for it to have strong vanitas connotations. See George Ferguson, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art (New York, 1959), 23.

Cesare Ripa (Iconologia of Uytbeeldingen des verstands . . ., trans. Dirck Pietersz Pers [Amsterdam, 1644], 144, 432) describes how the balance is one of the attributes of equality, Vgvalita or Gelijckheyt (“Door de Weeghschaele wort verstaen de oprachte en waerachtige recht vacrdigheyt, die een ygelijck geeft, dat hem toebehoort”), and of Justice, Giustitia or Gerechtigheyt.

The mirror is frequently considered the attribute of Prudentia and Truth. For a discussion of the various connotations of the mirror in emblematic literature of the mid-seventeenth century, see G. Langemeyer et al., Gerard ter Borch: Zwolle 1617–Deventer 1681 (The Hague, 1974), 98.

Otto van Veen, Amorum emblemata (Antwerp, 1608), 182. The full verse is:

Fortune is loues looking-glas
Eu’n as a perfect glasse doth represent the face,
Iust as it is in deed, not flattring it at all.
So fortune telleth by aduancement or by fall,
Th’euent that shall succeed, in loues luck-tryed case.

For further discussions of Vermeer’s use of Amorum emblemata see Eddy de Jongh, Zinne-en Minnebeelden in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw (Amsterdam, 1967), 49–50.

Eugene R. Cunnar, “The Viewer’s Share: Three Sectarian Readings of Vermeer’s Woman with a Balance,” Exemplaria 2 (1990): 518.

Anthony Mottola, ed., The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius (Garden City, NY, 1964), 85.

As seen in numerous paintings by Vermeer’s contemporaries, Dutch fashions in the mid-seventeenth century seem to have encouraged a bulky silhouette. The short jacket the girl wears, called a pet en lair, covered a bodice and a thickly padded skirt. This fashion created the impression of a forward-thrusting stomach, which was evidently a desirable one. The opinion that she is not pregnant but wearing such a bulky outfit, which this author expressed in Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century (Washington, DC, 1995), is shared by Albert Blankert in Gilles Aillaud, Albert Blankert, and John Michael Montias, Vermeer (Paris, 1986), 181, and by Marieke de Winkel, “The Interpretation of Dress in Vermeer's Paintings,” in Vermeer Studies, ed. Ivan Gaskell and Michiel Jonker (Washington, DC, 1998), 327–339, particularly 330–332. Nevertheless, I now consider it probable that the woman is pregnant. This change of opinion is based in part on the woman’s posture and in part on the belief that the model is Vermeer’s wife, Catharina Bolnes. See Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675): Sainte Praxède—Saint Praxedis (Monaco, 1998), 28.

The theory that the woman is pregnant was first proffered by Richard Carstensen and Marielene Putscher, "Ein Bild von Vermeer in medizinhistorischen Sicht," Deutsches Ärzteblatt-Ärtzliche Mitteilungen 68 (December 1971): 1–6. The authors concluded that the woman, following an old folk tradition, was weighing pearls to help her divine the sex of the unborn child. Since then, many authors have accepted her pregnant state as fact, including John Walsh Jr., “Vermeer,” Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 31 (Summer 1973): 79, and Ernst Günther Grimme, Jan Vermeer van Delft (Cologne, 1974), 54, who, as a consequence of the supposed pregnancy, identified the model as Vermeer’s wife, Catharina Bolnes, mother of his fifteen children. I identified the model, on a different basis, as Catharina Bolnes in Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675): Sainte Praxède—Saint Praxedis (Monaco, 1998), 28.

Nanette Salomon, “Vermeer and the Balance of Destiny,” in Essays in Northern European Art Presented to Egbert Haverkamp Begemann on His Sixtieth Birthday, ed. Anne-Marie Logan (Doornspijk, 1983), suggested that a pregnant woman holding scales would have been interpreted as a Catholic response to disagreements about the moment a Christian soul obtains grace and salvation. Instead of the predetermined state of grace accepted by the followers of Arininius or one gained through the efficacy of good works as preached by Gomanus, a Catholic, Salomon argued, would have understood that the state of grace of the unborn child was as yet undetermined. This opinion was also accepted by Sutton, in Jane Iandola Watkins, Peter C. Sutton, and Christopher Brown, Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting (Philadelphia, 1984), 342–343.

Kimberley Jones, “Vermeer’s Woman Holding a Balance: A Secularized Vision of the Virgin Mary,” unpublished lecture delivered at the Mid-Atlantic Symposium, National Gallery of Art, 1989; Eugene R. Cunnar, “The Viewer’s Share: Three Sectarian Readings of Vermeer’s Woman with a Balance,” Exemplaria 2 (1990): 501–536.

Eugene R. Cunnar, “The Viewer’s Share: Three Sectarian Readings of Vermeer’s Woman with a Balance,” Exemplaria 2 (1990): 501–536, corrects a number of misconceptions about the theological arguments advanced by Salomon and focuses on the meditative character of the image. He then analyzes the ways in which a Catholic, a Protestant, and an Arminian viewer might have responded to this work in light of their beliefs. He also accepts as fact that the woman is pregnant and attempts to relate the image to biblical texts, specifically Genesis 3:15, by interpreting the support underneath the table as the vision of a dragon described by John in Revelation 12. While one may question the likelihood of this latter interpretation, Cunnar’s assessment of the various possible theological responses to the painting is particularly useful.

For an argument that Vermeer represented here “the divine truth of revealed religion,” see Ivan Gaskell, “Vermeer, Judgment and Truth,” Burlington Magazine 126 (September 1984): 558–561. To support his argument Gaskell refers to one of the personifications of Truth described by Cesare Ripa in the 1644 Dutch edition of the lconologia.

The painted surface now measures 39.7 × 35.5 cm (15 5/8 × 14 in.), whereas, prior to the 1994 restoration, the painting measured 42.5 × 38 cm (16 3/4 × 14 15/16 in.).

See Picture Gallery Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz Berlin: Catalogue of Paintings 13th–18th Century, trans. Linda B. Parshall, 2nd rev. ed. (Berlin-Dahlem, 1978), 212. The comparison of this painting with Vermeer’s Woman Holding a Balance is not new. For comparisons with slightly different emphases see Wilhelm von Bode, Die Meister der holländischen und vlämischen Malerschulen, 2nd ed. (Leipzig, 1919), 86–89, and Herbert Rudolph, “‘Vanitas.’ Die Bedeutung mittelalterlicher und humanistischer Bildinhalte in der niederländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts,” in Festschrift für Wilhelm Pinder zum sechzigsten Geburtstage (Leipzig, 1938), 405–412.

A possible source for such a motif is Dou, Gerrit. Although Dou’s painting style is far more minute than Vermeer’s, many of the genre scenes painted by Vermeer have precedents in Dou’s oeuvre. See Keil Boström, “Peep-show or Case,” Kunsthistorische Mededelingen van het Rijksbureau van kunsthistorische documentatie 4 (1949): 21–24.

The thematic complexities of Vermeer’s composition are also lacking in De Hooch’s work. De Hooch’s woman weighs her gold before a wall richly decorated with a gilded-leather wallcovering and a half-open door leading into a second room. Neither of these elements reinforces the thematic gesture of a woman with a balance as strongly as does the painting of Vermeer's Last Judgment.

Albert Blankert, with contributions by Rob Ruurs and Willem van de Watering, Johannes Vermeer van Delft, 1632–1675 (Utrecht, 1975), 136, doc. 62. “Een Juffrouw die goud weegt in een kasje van J. van der Meer van Delft, extraordinaer konstig en kragtig geschildert.” It sold for fl 155, the third highest price in the sale. Nothing more is known of the box in which it sat, but at the very least it was a protective device designed to keep light and dust away from the painting’s delicate surface. In the 1683 inventory of goods accruing to Jacob Dissius after the death of his wife, Magdalena van Ruijven, three of Vermeer’s paintings are listed as being in boxes (kasies). See John Michael Montias, Vermeer and His Millieu: A Web of Social History (Princeton, 1989), 359, doc. 417. Presumably one of these was Woman Holding a Balance.

Wilhelm Martin, Gerard Dou (London, 1902), 145–147. See also: Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., “The Framing of a Vermeer,” in Collected Opinions: Essays on Netherlandish Art in Honour of Alfred Bader, ed. Volker Manuth and Axel Rüger (London, 2004), 232–239.

Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., “The Framing of a Vermeer,” in Collected Opinions: Essays on Netherlandish Art in Honour of Alfred Bader, ed. Volker Manuth and Axel Rüger (London, 2004), 232–239.

Average densities of 20.5 threads/cm horizontally and 16.5 threads/cm vertically were measured by the Thread Count Automation Project of Cornell University and Rice University (see report dated May 2010 in NGA conservation department files).

For pigment analysis of the paint layers see Hermann Kühn, “A Study of the Pigments and the Grounds Used by Jan Vermeer,” in National Gallery of Art Report and Studies in the History of Art 2 (1968): 191–192. Kühn’s conclusion that the yellow of the curtain is Indian yellow is based on a sample taken from the overpaint near the edge of the painting. Subsequent pigment analysis of the ground was undertaken on June 26, 1974, by Robert L. Feller, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, and by the NGA scientific research department using X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy and X-ray powder diffraction and optical microscopy (see reports dated September 30, 1994, and October 12, 1994, in NGA conservation department files). See also Melanie Gifford, “Painting Light: Recent Observations on Vermeer's Technique,” in Vermeer Studies, ed. Ivan Gaskell and Michiel Jonker (Washington, 1998), 185–199.

For this practice in Vermeer’s paintings see Jørgen Wadum, “Vermeer in Perspective,” in Johannes Vermeer, ed. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (New Haven and London, 1995), 66–79.

The paint and ground layers in this area were studied by the NGA scientific research department using cross-sections (see report dated July 11, 1994, in NGA conservation department files).