Junge Frau im Interieur, einen Brief empfangend

De Hooch made his finest pictures in Delft in the years he overlapped there with Vermeer, and the two share a taste for still, sunlit rooms where a small domestic event is quietly under way. Here a young woman in an interior has just been handed a letter. In the 17th-century Dutch Republic letters were a favourite subject for painters, partly because a growing merchant world ran on correspondence, and partly because a sealed letter let a viewer imagine a private story, very often a love affair. De Hooch signed this one on the door frame. He built the space the way he liked best, leading the eye from the near room through a doorway into light beyond, so the house itself feels as real as the woman reading in it.