A Perspective View of the Courtyard of a House

Samuel van Hoogstraten (Dordrecht 1627 – Dordrecht 1678). Oil painting on canvas, A Perspective View of the Courtyard of a House, by Samuel van Hoogstraten (Dordrecht 1627 – Dordrecht 1678), signed at the bottom, as if incised in the stone: S. V. H. / 1664 (?). The painting depicts an imposing courtyard, with steps leading down from an Ionic colonnade at the right. Seated on the steps is a boy with his back to the spectator, dressed in a yellow doublet, reading a paper. In the foreground a spaniel lies asleep. Beyond the colonnade a garden is glimpsed through doorways with a fountain with putto. On the balustrade in the left foreground is a cockatoo. The sculptural figures forming the pediment above the rusticated doorway could represent the old and new year, or summer and winter, and the bust after the antique set into a niche on the facade of the piano nobile looks like that of a Roman emperor or Seneca. Dyrham, Gloucestershire (Accredited Museum)