Dutch footwarmer

**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.

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