A young woman stands in profile at an open window, reading a letter held in both hands, her head bowed and her hair pinned back. Daylight from the window at the left falls on her face and white collar, and the casement glass catches a faint reflection of her. A heavy curtain hangs along the right edge, another is looped across the upper left, and on a rug-covered table in front of her a bowl of fruit spills over its rim.

On the wall behind her hangs a large painting of a standing Cupid. The museum names no sitter. Johannes Vermeer painted her about 1657–1659, and the museum places the picture at the beginning of the quiet interior scenes with few figures that mark his work after the end of the 1650s. It was acquired in Paris in 1742 for the Saxon elector's collection in Dresden. An X-ray in 1979 revealed a painted Cupid on the blank wall, covered over by another hand, most likely after Vermeer's death.

Conservators removed the overpaint between 2017 and early 2021, uncovering a standing Cupid with a bow, arrows and two masks. It is in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden.