Intérieur avec une mère près d'un berceau

Pieter de Hooch built his reputation on rooms like this one, painted around 1665, a Dutch household caught in ordinary daylight. A young mother sits with her small daughter on her lap and points to the cradle standing beside her. Nothing dramatic happens, and that was rather the point in the prosperous Dutch Republic of the 1660s, where a calm, well-run home was a quiet source of pride. De Hooch's real subject is the light. It enters by the window, catches in the floor tiles, and runs through an open door to a glimpse of the street and a canal at the back. He painted that bright view through a doorway again and again during his years in Delft.