Mother with a Child and a Chambermaid

By 1665 Pieter de Hooch had left quiet Delft for Amsterdam, the richest city in Europe, and his painted interiors grew grander with it. Here a woman in a fur-trimmed blue jacket holds a small child on her lap, a wicker cradle at her side, while further back a maid sweeps the tiled floor near the fireplace. De Hooch loved this sort of household order, each person settled in her place and her task. What holds the picture together is the light. It falls from a high window on the left and carries all the way to the rear wall, where it settles on a framed painting hung above the panelling.