THE ROMANCE OF OPEN WINDOWS.

THE ROMANCE OF OPEN WINDOWS. We are accustomed to the use that Vermeer made of light pouring into a room from the a window at the side of the painting. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has an exhibit on the theme of 19th century paintings which feature a view through an open window, usually from a point of view opposite the window. Here is the Metropolitan’s website for the exhibit which reproduces a number of the works in the exhibit. The website’s introduction to the exhibit says: “Juxtaposing near and far, the window is a metaphor for unfulfilled longing.” The website quotes Novalis from 1778: “Everything at a distance turns into poetry: distant mountains, distant people, distant events: all become Romantic.”