If I too might be permitted a little personal fantasy, I imagine Vermeer taking a decision early in his career to confine himself to one room, and to create a whole world within it from the simplest of means: a few friend and members of his family, their best clothes, some of his family's collection of paintings and treasured pieces of furniture. It is clear from his small production that he worked slowly and was not commercially driven to repeat subjects endlessly, as de Hooch was. Perhaps his income from art dealing, or his mother-in-law's money, allowed him this luxury, until debts caught up with him. And then he disposed these simple elements, in a few pictures, to say what he wanted - however elusively - about the subjects for which he really cared: domestic routine, the love of men for women and fathers for daughters, the consolations of music, the worlds of science and scholarship, his own profession and its ambitions - all captured in his room within a room, his camera in a camera.
Philip Steadman, Vermeer's Camera