The Asparagus Vendor

The man coming down the stairs on the right is wearing a Japanese-style robe. In the 1670s the Dutch East India Company was the only European trader allowed into Japan, and silk gowns brought home from there became a costly fashion among well-off Dutch men, worn about the house and even in portraits. De Hooch painted this household in the second half of that decade, and the whole room speaks of the same prosperity. The young woman in the middle, in fine fabrics and pearls, turns from the delivery to speak to him, while at the open window a vendor in a straw hat hands in a basket of white asparagus, a delicacy on any Dutch table. Behind them stands a big wardrobe, the Dutch kast, draped with a sheet to keep scratches off good furniture.