For centuries, no one knew exactly where this street was. Then researchers went looking through old Delft tax records, and found an answer.
What you're looking at
Painted around 1658, The Little Street is one of only a handful of outdoor scenes Vermeer ever painted, most of his work being quiet indoor interiors instead. It shows two modest brick houses on a narrow Delft street, with women quietly going about small domestic tasks in the doorways and a courtyard visible between the buildings.
A real address, found centuries later
Unlike Vermeer's interior scenes, which are often generalized, imagined rooms, this street looks like a specific, real place. Researchers using 17th-century Delft tax and property records believe they have identified the actual address Vermeer painted, matching the building layout and courtyard to a real historical property in the city. It's one of the more concrete pieces of detective work in Vermeer scholarship, turning a painted street into a real, locatable spot.
That grounding in a real place is part of why the painting feels so quietly convincing: the brickwork, the patched plaster, and the worn doorways read less like an idealized townscape and more like an honest record of an ordinary Delft street.
One detail to look for
Look at the small figures in the doorways, absorbed in everyday tasks like sewing or minding children. Vermeer gives them no dramatic gesture at all, just the quiet rhythm of an ordinary afternoon.
See it at its real size
Our canvas print is labeled against the true size of the original, so what you're hanging is honestly scaled to the painting Vermeer actually made. Shop the canvas print.