Alastair Sooke: “In Vermeer’s day, Delft was anything but a backwater … [and] it is inconceivable that Vermeer was unaware of developments in Dutch art happening elsewhere.” And, says Louvre curator Blaise Ducos, “The verisimilitude of these paintings is high, but the realism is low. They are not like photographs. Rather, they are scenes that are arranged and rearranged.”