The Love Letter (Dutch: De liefdesbrief) is a 17th-century genre painting by Jan Vermeer.

The tied-up curtain in the foreground creates the impression that the viewer is looking at an intensely private, personal scene.

[3] In the second half of the 17th century, the painting probably found its place in the collection of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth's monarch John III Sobieski.

[4] The 1696 inventory of the Wilanów Palace in Warsaw lists among Dutch paintings "a painting of a lady, playing a lute in a golden robe, while a girl gives her a letter in the black frames (obraz damy, grającej na lutni w złotej szacie, a dziewczyna list jey oddaje w ramach czarnych)".

[4] On September 23, 1971, the painting was stolen from its display at The Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels, where it was on loan from the Rijksmuseum.

On October 3, 1971, using the name "Tijl van Limburg" (a character similar to Robin Hood), Roymans contacted the Brussels newspaper Le Soir and asked for a reporter to meet him in a forest with a camera.

After the encounter, the pictures were published, alongside Roymans' conditions: 200 million Belgian francs to be given to famine-stricken Bengali refugees in East Pakistan.

Roymans additionally requested the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels organize campaigns in their respective countries to raise money to combat world famine.