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
A Woman With No Clothes On when he exhibits "Le déjeuner sur l'herbe" and "Olympia" in which the naked model is a young Victorine. While critics and the general public dismiss the works, and label Victorine a common prostitute, she is determined to make her mark in the art world as a painter in her own right. Her bitter struggle to succeed is punctuated by the exchanges between Manet and his friend Baudelaire on the matter of modernism. "A Woman With No Clothes On" was the winner of the Trafalgar Squared Prize for Work in Progress (2008). It was described by the chair of judges, Wendy