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portrays the Kolk—a significant harbor in the seventeenth-century—early in the morning, and nearly vacant. This reminds me of Wordsworth’s sublime but slightly strained sonnet “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802,” which describes smoke-choked nineteenth-century London with an oddly pastoral rhetoric: “This City now doth, like a garment, wear / The beauty of the morning; silent, bare …” Both artists show us their cities in the best possible light, but they have to get up pretty early to do so.
    But is the essence remoteness or unknowability? There’s nothing remote about The Girl with a Pearl Earring— the exquisite maid who stands frozen, Eurydice-like, in a welter of conflicting passions. She couldn’t stand any closer to me; her clear gaze couldn’t seize me more directly.
    Whether she’s turning toward or away from me, though, I don’t know. Impossible to know whether she’s turning toward or away from the nothingness behind her.
    In View of Delft , the comings and goings of men and women are dwarfed by a not altogether friendly sky. But what is realized is thrillingly realized—if from across the water—the city vibrant with gold and russet. Again and again, I’m overcome by desire to enter that city.
    I stay in the Mauritshuis another hour, as my ability to concentrate comes and goes—and finally goes for good. In the cozy museum cafeteria, in the basement, I sit quietly, hoping a frothy double espresso can revive me. It doesn’t. I’m crashing, the long trip catching up with me. It feels like the weight of divorce, jet lag, and the peculiar loneliness of travel are suddenly bearing down. I nod, shudder with two or three convulsive yawns, and realize I have to leave.
    4. Dr. Kees Kaldenbach
    It looks, it feels like the first true summer afternoon of the year as I pedal through Amsterdam’s idyllic Vondelpark. It’s Wednesday, the day before I’m traveling to Delft. I’m on my way to meet an art historian, Dr. Kees Kaldenbach, who lives a couple of blocks from the park’s south gate. He’s one of the best living critics of Vermeer’s work, and probably knows more about Delft, as Vermeer knew it, than anyone.
    Dr. Kaldenbach opens the door. He’s shy and lanky, looming above me as he ushers me into a large, high-ceilinged living room filled with art books and houseplants. He’s awkward and tentative and repetitive in his movements. After offering me a drink (I ask for ice water, which baffles him. “Are you sure?” he asks), he makes a couple of protracted trips to the kitchen before informing me, with a vague wave of the hand, that the freezer is “defrosting.”
    Finally, he manages to provide a glass of slightly cool tap water, and sits down next to me on the sofa. I’ve come armed with a few questions but can’t seem to articulate what I was thinking. I go ahead and try anyway. How much of a given work is “observed,” I wonder, how much “improvised”? Are there patterns, tendencies he can tell me about? But I realize it’s probably impossible to answer, and tell Kaldenbach so. He nods.
    We flip through a glossy book of Vermeer reproductions, until we light on View of Delft . I touch it with my fingertips, and ask if I will be able to see the view, the standpoint from which Vermeer painted, when I go to Delft. Is it still there, or has the city changed too much? “It’s there,” he says. Quickly, he sketches out, with a slender index finger, how much of the actual painting I’ll be able to see as Vermeer saw it. Steeples, one or two particular roofs, here and here and here. How accurate was Vermeer in his portrayal of the town? “ Very accurate,” says Kaldenbach. He notes how the two herring buses—fishing boats—are riding unusually high in the water, moored for repairs. The fact that both are missing