Woman with a Child in a Pantry

Pieter de Hooch made this in Delft in the mid-1650s, the same years Vermeer was working a few streets away, and the two men were chasing the same thing: how to paint light falling through a real Dutch house. Almost nothing happens. A maid crouches to show a small boy what is inside her jug, in the corner of an ordinary home. What De Hooch is really building is the space, and you can see straight down into the cellar on one side and out through a doorway to the bright entrance hall on the other, each opening its own little box of light. The child is held by long fabric reins stitched to his dress, the way toddlers were kept upright while learning to walk.