Behind a heavy tapestry curtain, a painter in a slashed black doublet works on a picture of a young woman posed as Clio, Muse of History, with laurel wreath, trumpet and book. It is Vermeer's most complex allegory of his own art, and he never sold it. Hitler acquired it in 1940; after the war it went to the Kunsthistorisches Museum.
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A crease runs down the large map of the Seventeen Provinces on the back wall, often read as the division between the Dutch Republic and the Spanish south.
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Compared by a vision model
