The Council Chamber in Amsterdam Town Hall

Pieter de Hooch made his name painting humble Dutch courtyards, women and children in modest brick houses touched by careful daylight. By the mid-1660s his taste, and his clients' taste, had turned grander. Here he sets his figures inside the new Amsterdam Town Hall, a vast marble building the city had just raised as a monument to its own wealth and independence. Small groups of well-dressed visitors stand about the burgomasters' council chamber, dwarfed by the room. Because de Hooch recorded the decoration so faithfully, the painting now works as a document of how that chamber actually looked, its carvings and hangings since altered. The light still does what it always did in his work, sliding in from the side and pooling on the polished floor.