Interior views were a popular subject in the Golden Age: shops, taverns, churches, schools, cottages. Best known are the domestic settings with men and women reading, writing letters, making music or ‘simply’ drinking, as in the works by Vermeer, Terborch, De Hooch, and others. The room often includes marble floors, rich carpets and gleaming chandeliers.

However, do these paintings really portray the actual appearance of Dutch middle-class interior in this period, with features that one could really find in homes of the period, or are they just an artistic illusion?