Interior of the Oude Kerk in Delft, with a Trompe l’Oeil Curtain

The green curtain hanging across this church interior is paint, and so is the brass rod it slides on. In 17th-century Dutch homes valuable pictures were often protected from light and dust by a small cloth on a rail, and Houckgeest paints one as if someone had just pulled it aside for you. The joke has an ancient ancestor. The Roman writer Pliny tells how the Greek painter Parrhasius beat his rival Zeuxis with a painted curtain so convincing that Zeuxis asked for it to be drawn back. Behind the illusion is a real place, the Oude Kerk, the Old Church of Delft, seen past a massive white column. Sunlight coming through the stained-glass windows drops small patches of colour onto that column. Houckgeest signed the panel with his initials GH and the date 1654, low in the centre.