By hello
Comfort, desire, and revision. The wooden footwarmer at lower right would have held a pot of coals. In Dutch genre imagery, footwarmers could carry erotic associations because they warmed the body beneath a woman’s skirt. The Metropolitan Museum notes this symbolic tradition, while Rijksmuseum exhibition texts add that Vermeer overpainted an earlier large fire basket in this lower-right area, replacing it with Delft tiles and the small footwarmer. References: Walter Liedtke, Metropolitan Museum of Art essay; Rijksmuseum 2023 Vermeer exhibition texts; Essential Vermeer catalogue entry.