She sits on a platform a step higher than the black and white marble floor, her right foot on a terrestrial globe and her right hand on her heart as she looks up, adoringly, at a glass sphere hung from the ceiling by a blue ribbon.

Catholijck of algemeen Geloof") given in Ripa's book provide many of the symbols in the painting, including the color of the woman's clothing, her hand gesture, and the presence of the crushed snake and the apple.

One image in the book shows her as a woman, dressed in white (signifying light and purity) and blue (which relates to heaven, as Ripa states in another text).

[1] Ripa describes Faith as "having the world under her feet", and Vermeer used the symbol quite literally, showing a globe of the earth under the woman's right foot.

According to Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., a University of Maryland academic and curator of a Vermeer exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, this is "an assemblage that gives the image a Eucharistic character not found in the text."

Wheelock, citing his fellow academic at the University of Maryland, Quint Gregory, believes the slight overlapping of the chalice and the gold backdrop of the crucifix "may symbolically suggest the essential role of the Eucharist in bridging the physical and spiritual realms", a very Catholic idea.

The pose was uncommon in Dutch art, but Vermeer was considered an expert in Italian painting, in which the image was often used (especially those of Guido Reni [1575–1642], whose works were then owned in Holland).

[2] Wheelock believes the large book, which has a metal clasp, is a Bible, but the Metropolitan Museum of Art states on its website that the volume may be the Catholic Missale Romanum.

While essential for the painting's symbolic content, the ecstatic pose of the woman and the crushed snake seem incongruous within this Dutch setting.

"[2] Walter Liedtke objected to Wheelock's point by asserting that the artist took a very realistic approach primarily in depicting the terrestrial globe and reflections in the glass sphere.

Instead, according to Liedtke, the painting is best compared to contemporary Dutch paintings illustrating abstract concepts, including Adriaen Hanneman's Allegory of the Peace (1664; still in situ at the Eerste Kamer in the Binnenhof), a histrionic picture showing how reticent Vermeer was in this work; and Karel Dujardin's Allegory of the Immortal Fame of Art Vanquishing Time and Envy (1675; Historisches Museum, Bamberg); Gabriel Metsu's The Triumph of Justice (late 1650s; Mauritshuis, The Hague); Adriaen van de Velde's The Annunciation (1667; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)as well as works by Van Honthorst and early works of De Lairesse.

[5] Vermeer's imaginative use of symbolism in the painting indicates to Wheelock that the painter was not given specific instructions on the allegory but chose the various items himself.

"[1] The painting was one of those apparently not among the 21 works by the artist collection of Vermeer's main patron, Pieter Claesz van Ruijven (1624–1674), and auctioned off in the Dissius sale of 1696.

The sale catalogue described the work as "A sitting Woman with deep meanings, depicting the New Testament", and also stated, "powerfully and glowingly painted".

[2] By the early 19th century the painting apparently had found its way to Austria, where it was depicted in the background of Portrait of a Cartographer and His Wife by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller in 1824 (now in Westfälisches Landesmuseum, Münster).