Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid at least a degree of intimacy between the two. The painting visits many of Vermeer's usual painterly motifs; in particular his obsession with the inside/outside axis of interior spaces, and through his description of the tiled floor as well as the verticals of the dresses, window frame and back wall painting, his interest in geometry and abstract form. Vermeer had experimented with this painterly device earlier in his career, notably in his "View of Delft", "The Lacemaker" and "The Art of Painting". "Lady Writing" was stolen on 27 April 1974, along with a Goya, two Gainsboroughs and three Rubens from
The Woman with the Spider's Web The Woman with the Spider's Web The Woman with the Spider's Web (or The Woman with the Spider's Web between Bare Trunks, German: Die Frau mit dem Spinnennetz zwischen kahlen Bäumen) is a small 1803 print by the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, made into a woodcut by his brother Christian Friedrich, a carpenter and furniture maker, the same year. The image explores themes of death and the transience of life. It shows a woman sitting alone under an eerie, barren, dead tree in which the upper branches appear as if scattering crows. The lower ground is surrounded by