Mutter, die ihr Mieder neben einer Wiege schnürt

Around 1660 the little Dutch city of Delft produced a run of painters who made whole pictures out of ordinary rooms and daylight, Vermeer the most famous of them, and Pieter de Hooch working the same streets. Here a young mother sits beside a wooden cradle, lacing up her bodice and smiling down at the child, while a dog stretches out lazily on the tiled floor. There is no story and no lesson, only a morning in a comfortable Dutch household. What de Hooch cared about is the room itself, the way the light falls through a high window on the right and the floor tiles pull your eye back past the curtained bed. Behind the woman a brass warming-pan and a red skirt hang on the panelling, the small props of a life kept in order.