Samuel van Hoogstraten, 'A Peepshow with Views of the Interior of a Dutch House', about 1655-60

Samuel van Hoogstraten, the artist who made this peculiar object, called it a wonderlijke perspectyfkas – a curious perspective box. It is a rectangular wooden cabinet painted on the inside and outside, and open on one end to let in light.

Looking into the open side, which was originally covered with translucent oiled paper, we see a distorted jumble of walls, windows, open doors, crooked floor tiles, misshapen chairs and an oddly proportioned dog. It is only when we peer through a peephole – there’s one on either side of the cabinet – that everything falls into place: we see the illusion of a three-dimensional seventeenth-century Dutch house, with views into a variety of rooms and outdoor spaces. The rooms are quiet: one woman lies asleep in bed, while another reads in a chair. The only other living being in the house is a dog, though a man outside peeks in through a window.

A letter addressed to the artist lies on one of the chairs in the middle room, while a portrait print bearing the van Hoogstraten family crest appears to the left of the bedroom door. This suggests that we are actually peeping into the artist’s imaginary home. And van Hoogstraten further teases the viewer, reminding us of our intrusion into this quiet domestic space. When looking into the box from the left, our behaviour is mirrored by the man opposite, who secretly watches the reading woman through the window. Looking through the hole on the right, our gaze is met by the dog, which has spotted us spying on the women in the house.

The three external sides of the box show allegorical scenes representing concepts that inspired the artist. The Latin inscriptions on scrolls of paper identify them: ‘Amoris Causa’ (‘for the sake of love’), with a young artist drawing Urania, one of the Muses; ‘Lucri Causa’ (‘for the sake money)’, with a putto pouring coins from a cornucopia while a painter works on a portrait; and ‘Gloriae Causa’ (‘for the sake of glory’), with a putto placing a gold chain around a painter’s neck and crowning him with a laurel wreath. On the top lid of the cabinet is an image of a nude woman lying in bed, usually identified as Venus, accompanied by the infant Cupid. It is distorted in the manner of an anamorphosis, which means that it can only be perceived correctly from one vantage point (for another example, see ‘The Ambassadors’ by Hans Holbein the Younger). However, the distorted projection is not entirely successful, as there seems to be no point from which the image is convincingly corrected.

Reflecting a fascination with perspective and optical devices, such boxes were produced in the Dutch Republic from about 1650, for a relatively short period of about 25 years. Only six survive today. The National Gallery’s example is the most complex and sophisticated in its representation of perspectives, and the only one with two peepholes, giving views of the same interior from opposing directions.