Vermeer's Painting 'The Little Street'

choi

Nina Siegal, Finding Vermeer on the Street He Left Behind; In Johannes Vermeer's hometown of Delft, a discovery brings new interest in his life. New York Times, July 3, 2016 (in the Travel section that appears every Sunday).
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/0 ... hometown-delft.html

My comment:
(a)
(i) The Jewish (Ashkenazic) surname Segal (as well as its variant Siegal): "acronym from the Hebrew phrase SeGan Levia 'assistant Levite.' "
(ii) Levite (n)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Levite

(b) "He [Vermeer] lived and worked his entire life in Delft"

Delft
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delft
("aside a canal, the 'Delf,' which comes from the word [Modern Dutch, verb] delven, meaning delv[e] or dig")

Note the capitalized d, signifying a proper name. Indeed French Wikipedia has a page for the Fuch canal called Delf, See Delf (canal)
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delf_(canal)

choi

(c) "late last year, a significant discovery was made about the location of one of Vermeer's most famous paintings, 'The Little Street' — considered by Vermeer scholars to be the most naturalistic townscape in all of Dutch painting * * * After about a year and a half of research, Frans Grijzenhout, an art history professor at the University of Amsterdam, found data in a 17th-century tax registry from the Delft archives that allowed him to pinpoint the location of the house in Vermeer’s image. It is on the east side of town, near the main square at [Street address] Vlamingstraat 40-42. The house, it turns out, was owned by Vermeer's widowed aunt, Ariaentgen Claes van der Minne, or Ariaantje. * * * Until July 17, the Museum Prinsenhof in Delft hosts the exhibition, 'Vermeer Is Coming Home / The Little Street Returns to Delft,' with the original masterpiece as its centerpiece, on loan from the Rijksmuseum."
(i)
(A) Vermeer's The Little Street Discovered. Rijksmuseum, an exhibition from Nov 20, 2015 to Mar 16, 2016
https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/ve ... e-street-discovered
(B) Sandra Smallenburg, Finally Found: the Exact Location of Vermeer's 'The Little Street.' NRC, Nov 19, 2015
http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2015/11 ... s-the-little-street

presented details of calculations to identify the location.

* NRC Handelsblad
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRC_Handelsblad
, where NRC represents "Nieuwe [New] Rotterdamsche Courant."
(ii)
(A) Rijksmuseum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rijksmuseum
(English: Imperial Museum; is a Dutch national museum; in Amsterdam; founded in 1800)
(B) Museum Het Prinsenhof
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_Het_Prinsenhof
("Prinsenhof ('The Court of the Prince') ")
(iii) The Little Street (Dutch: Het Straatje; executed [painted] c 1657–58; [Vermeer] signed on the left hand corner below the window "I V MEER")   en.wikipedia.org

choi

(d) Dutch English dictionary:
* het: "the (the neuter definite article)"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/het

is a definite article for noun neuter. See the table.
* straat (noun feminine; diminutive straatje, which is a noun neuter; from Latin [noun feminine] strāta): "street"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/straat
* Vlaming (noun masculine): "Fleming"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Vlaming
* prins (noun masculine; plural prinsen; female singular prinses)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/prins
* hof (noun neuter): "1. (royal) court * * * 3. court, yard"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hof

German noun masculine Hof has both definitions also. (The first letter of German noun is capitalized. Always.)
* oud (adj; inflected form: oude (see table) ): "old"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/oud
* The "kerk" is Dutch noun feminine for "church," with noun "kirk" as the Scottish cognate.

(e) "Although wonderfully preserved, Delft is not an open-air museum like Bruges, Belgium, or Venice; it still has the local feel of a town engaged in contemporary life."

The sentence means that entire cities of Bruges and Venice are old.
(f) " 'The Little Street,' in spite of its title, is not a depiction of a street so as much as it is a portrait of two houses: one large 15th-century brick house [on the right] with crow-stepped gables * * * The 15th-century house on the right was replaced by an elegant two-story building that was probably built in the first couple of decades of the 20th century, with large picture windows and neo-Classical detailing on the facade. The house on the left, with rectilinear brickwork, was probably built more recently."

crow-stepped gable
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crow-stepped_gable
(g) "Before us was Oude Kerk, the 13th-century Gothic church with a 250-foot tilting tower known as “the crooked John,” where Vermeer and four of his children are buried in a family crypt. Leaving the church and heading down the cobblestone Oude Delft street along the canal, we see the wealthier section of town where Vermeer lived with his in-laws"

For Dutch definitions, see (d).