Vermeer's Mistress and Maid (Frick Diptych) - Hardcover

The subject of writing and receiving letters, which recurs frequently in the work of Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), is given dramatic tension in this masterful painting of two women in a mysterious moment of crisis. The artist seldom, if ever, surpassed the subtly varied effects of light seen here as it gleams from the pearl jewellery, sparkles from the glass and silver objects on the table, and falls softly over the figures in their shadowy setting. The Frick Diptych series sparks a dialogue between creative spirits and art historians, promising new insights into some of the Frick's most famous masterpieces. The third volume, to be published in 2019, will have a contribution by author Edmund de Waal on a pair of porcelain and bronze candlesticks by the 18th-century French metalworker Pierre Gouthiere.

James Ivory is an Oscar-winning screenwriter and a renowned filmmaker best known for making several acclaimed and award-winning films with Ismail Merchant. Margaret Iacono is associate research curator at The Frick Collection. Her areas of interest include northern European painting of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries and the history of collecting. Most recently she organized Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis (2014), and also served as the Frick coordinator for The Frick Collection: Art Treasures in New York, held at the Mauritshuis, The Hague (2015).