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 a Gambling Mania The Woman with a Gambling Mania The Woman with Gambling Mania is an 1822 painting by Théodore Géricault. It is a member of a series of ten portraits of people with specific manias done by Géricault between 1820 and 1824, including "Portrait of a Kleptomaniac" and "Insane Woman". Following the controversy surrounding his "The Raft of the Medusa", Géricault fell into a depression. In return for help by psychiatrist Étienne-Jean Georget, Géricault offered him a series of paintings of mental patients, including this one, in a time when the scientific world was curious about the minds of the mentally insane.