Buildings often play an important role in paintings.

Take this scene by the Dutch 17th-century artist Pieter de Hooch - the architecture is central to the way in which the painting works.

For a start, it locates the action in a particular time and place: the buildings in the background are very similar to some constructed on the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam in the 17th century.

One house even has a carefully painted plaque giving the date it was built, 1620.

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