Handmade oil painting reproduction of The Procuress, one of the most famous Johannes Vermeer paintings. This painting is the first known Vermeer. The subject, the decor and the cultural climate are perfectly exemplary of the Caravaggio school, in the tradition of raconteurs of ribald stories, prodigal sons and cheaters. One can see a young woman, whose firm curves are being groped by the putative client under the attentive eye of the assistant procuress.

In 1653 he enrolled at the local artists guild. His earliest signed and dated painting, The Procuress (1656; Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden), is thematically related to a Dirck van Baburen painting that Vermeer owned and that appears in the background of two of his own paintings. Another possible influence was that of Hendrick Terbrugghen, whose style anticipated the light color tonalities of Vermeer's later works.

It Is obvious that what could be and is very often vulgar when rendered by certain painters of the Caravaggio schoool, is transcended here. All the emphasis is put on beauty, the quality of the admirable tapestry, the balustrade and the perfect contrast of the yellow with the work's overall reddish-brown hue. A painting with promise. Vermeer had not yet been born

Conservation treatment in 2002-04 fundamentally improved the appearance of this painting (figs. 1 and 2). X-radiographs reveal that during the painting process Vermeer made a number of changes to the composition, something he had hardly done in his earlier two paintings.

Overall, he subtly intensified the contrasts between light and dark passages (fig. 3). The man on the left had a smaller beret which allowed for a vividly illuminated face. Most strikingly, the face of the man in red was not concealed by the shadow of his hat but also lit brightly. Moreover, his gaze was directed at the young woman who had a second coin in her open hand. In painting this out Vermeer intensified the women’s expectant attitude. By obscuring the suitor’s face he highlighted the dramatic tension between the protagonists