A Man with Dead Birds, and Other Figures, in a Stable

This is early Pieter de Hooch, from around 1655, before he settled into the sunlit Delft courtyards he is known for. He was fascinated by how light moves through a building, and here he lays out a stable as a set of rectangles, doorways and openings leading the eye from shadow into daylight, where a young woman sits cradling her baby. For a long time the foreground told a different story: a heap of dead birds and hunting gear, with a dog nosing at them. An X-ray taken in 1971 showed that clutter was never de Hooch's. It was added in the 19th century, most likely by the painter who owned the picture, Ignatius van Regemorter, to turn a plain domestic scene into the livelier hunting subject buyers wanted.