The Music Lesson

The Music Lesson, also called A Lady at the Virginals with a Gentleman, is an oil painting on canvas by Johannes Vermeer, made around 1662–1665 and part of the British Royal Collection since King George III acquired it in 1762.

A young woman stands with her back to us at a virginal while a gentleman beside her listens, his lips slightly parted as if singing along; Dutch painting of the time often linked music with love. The scene is set deep in a room with a tiled floor, a white jug on a carpet-covered table and a bass viol lying unplayed on the floor. The instrument has been identified as the work of the Ruckers family of Antwerp, and its lid carries the Latin motto MVSICA LETITIAE CO[ME]S MEDICINA DOLOR[VM], 'music is the companion of joy, balm for sorrow'. In the mirror above the woman her face is turned slightly toward the man, and the reflection also shows part of the leg and crossbar of the painter's easel. A partly visible painting at right has been identified by Gregor Weber as a Roman Charity, Cimon and Pero, from the workshop of Dirck van Baburen.

The work measures about 74 by 65 cm and is signed on the lower edge of the picture frame at right. It was sold in the Dissius sale in Amsterdam on 16 May 1696, was owned by the Venetian painter Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini by 1718, and later passed to Joseph Smith, British consul in Venice. When George III bought Smith's collection, the picture was believed to be by Frans van Mieris the Elder because of a misread signature; Théophile Thoré restored it to Vermeer in 1866.

The painting has hung at both Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace. It was included in the National Gallery's 2013 exhibition Vermeer and Music, and that year the documentary Tim's Vermeer followed the inventor Tim Jenison's attempt to recreate it with an optical device, a claim that critics have disputed.