Mann übergibt einer Frau einen Brief in der Diele eines Hauses

By 1670 de Hooch had left Delft for Amsterdam, and his rooms grew grander, like this tiled entrance hall of a canal house with its door and window thrown open to the street. A servant has just come in with a letter, and a young woman in a blue jacket takes it. In Dutch painting of this time a delivered letter almost always carried one meaning, a message from a suitor, so the small scene hums with the suggestion of a romance the viewer is left to imagine. De Hooch loved this trick of letting you see straight through a house, from the shadowed hall out into the bright daylight beyond. The little dog on her lap was the usual shorthand for faithfulness.