A heavy curtain is drawn back to reveal a sunlit interior, where a woman in a golden skirt sits at the center, holding a cittern in one hand and a letter in the other. Standing just behind her, a maid in a blue skirt and white cap leans forward, her gaze directed toward her seated mistress, as if sharing in the intimacy of the moment. The checkerboard floor recedes in sharp diagonals, its black and white tiles leading the eye into the room and accentuating the space’s depth.

At the woman's feet, a pair of black slippers lies abandoned, while a broom rests nearby, suggesting a pause in daily routines. The composition is carefully arranged, with the curtain in the foreground creating the sense of a private scene glimpsed by chance, and the detailed brushwork capturing the textures of fabric, wood, and tile. The Love Letter is a genre painting by Johannes Vermeer, created around 1669–1670 during the Dutch Golden Age of painting. The subject is a woman receiving a love letter, as indicated by the letter in her hand and the cittern, a string instrument often associated with love, which she holds across her lap.

The Rijksmuseum notes that the painting belonged to the collection of Pieter van Lennep in Amsterdam before passing to his daughter and then to J.F. van Lennep, and was acquired for the museum in 1893 after a sale in Amsterdam. The work is notable within Vermeer’s oeuvre as the only one to include a seascape, visible in the lower of the two paintings on the wall.