The Courtyard of a House in Delft

Pieter de Hooch’s The Courtyard of a House in Delft, painted in 1658, shows a woman with her broom and a small girl pausing in a paved courtyard, with a canal and the tower of the Nieuwe Kerk glimpsed through the passage beyond. The work is a hymn to the virtues of cleanliness and order that the Dutch prized, rendered with de Hooch’s mastery of brick, light, and receding space. It stands with Vermeer’s art as one of the defining images of the Delft School.