Full image of ‘new’ Vermeer with uncovered Cupid released by Dresden museum

The cupid changed the story completely. She was having an affair or waiting for the sailor to return, and completely lost her innocence. She's also looking pregnant. If it was an order, and it surely was, the father and family must have been furious and either ordered Vermeer or someone else to overpaint the cupid. And the girl got her innocence back. Could also happened a couple of years later when the lover didn't come back or married someone else.

Note that dutch girls at those times, and esp. those painted by Vermeer had their loved ones on sea in the east-indies for business. They all were reading letters, and had a map on the wall.

> Following further investigations, including tests in an archaeometry laboratory, it was discovered that layers of binding agent and a layer of dirt existed between the image of Cupid and the overpainting. The conservators concluded that several decades would have passed between the completion of one layer and the addition of the next and therefore concluded that Vermeer could not have painted over the Cupid himself.

When I started reading I was concerned about that as well, but the article references recent analysis showing the wall was painted decades after the rest of the painting, and couldn't have been done by the original artist.