Imagine a small neighborhood, in a borough of New York. You can hear the din of neighbors chatting, the whispers of wind through the trees, and even the shuffle of people walking about. This homey ,serene, comfortable, feeling is synonymous with the feeling a viewer gets when looking at The Little Street by Johannes Vermeer.
The painting at first glance resembles a photo of an old, worn down building that could be found in a place like New York. The red bricks on the three story structure are meticulously painted. The building is strewn with little cracks that are filled with mortar, and the bricks are a bit discolored, adding to the worn theme of the work. The windows on this tall building are detailed with bricks that frame the tops, arching over them. The windows have two panels. On top they are paneled with glass, and all of the lower sections, except for one on the second story, are blocked by hinged wooden panels. In the doorway of this large building a woman sits, in her darkly colored clothing, with a white head wrap, doing what seems to be needle work on a small piece of cloth. The ground in front is shown to be a sand or dirt walkway. To the left of this main building, there is a smaller home, with its chimney barely making it onto the edge of the canvas, behind a small thicket of deep forest like vines. Between the two structures, there is an alley­way, where a woman, dressed in a white headwrap, and blue and red colored clothing, who is bent over