Man Handing a Letter to a Woman in the Entrance Hall of a House

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.