Vermeer looked across the Kolk harbour at his home town from the south-east, with the Schiedam and Rotterdam gates reflected in still water beneath a vast, clouded sky. Sunlight picks out the tower of the Nieuwe Kerk, which he moved closer to the centre. It is his only cityscape, probably commissioned by his patron Pieter van Ruijven.
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The initials VM appear on the barge at lower left. In Proust's novel, the writer Bergotte dies in front of this picture, admiring its "little patch of yellow wall".
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Compared by a vision model
