Mother and Child with a Serving Woman Sweeping
Pieter de Hooch, oil on canvas, c.1670
Cleanliness and godliness are united in de
Hooch's vision of domestic virtue. A mother nurses her child
beneath a crucifixion scene as sunlight streaming into the
immaculate room casts the shadow of a cross on the wall.
After marrying in the mid-1650s, de Hooch
lived in Delft, where his work first began to focus on everyday
scenes of family life.