"Aristedes of Thebes 'was the first of all painters who depicted the mind and expressed the feelings of a human being.'" In De Hooch's paintings are other inventions, too, including his trademark doorkijkje, a window or door that opens onto another space. It was a retrospective of the paintings of Pieter de Hooch, a painter I had never heard of, and those were the dates it ran. By 1656, when he painted his first dated work, The Procuress, De Hooch had already left his own apprenticeship years behind and embarked on the great works of his mature period, whose characteristics were the small interior scenes that would become Vermeer's trademark. The design is similar, the differences clear: De Hooch is more expressive and less precise, without that weird characteristic of Vermeer's, the uncanny way that his paintings, like a pixelated photo blown up too big, dissolve when seen from too close. [Extracted from the article]