the dutch painting

The painting I chose was Jan Vermeer's astronomer.

• Normally, in Dutch painting, if there is a window, light is always bright and penetrates freely through the window. But in this painting, the window is dirty and light is relatively darker.
• Light is seen as knowledge. So in my own opinion, the light in this painting indicates the mystery of astronomy.
• window is a means of communication between interior and exterior. In this scheme, window is dirty and unclear which makes this room a sort of isolated island in a small town or a city that we do not know.

Then my narrative developed from such scheme was that an anti-social astronomer observes the universe and make a model of the galaxy in South Pole.

First of all, about the siting, South pole is isolated from the other continents which corresponds to the isolation notion of the painting. Then, within south pole, sun does not come out everyday. When it sets, it does not come out in half a year, when it rises, it does not set in another half a year. This phenomenon is called polar day and polar night. It is a perfect place for a astronomer to work at. A astronomer can spend the polar night time focusing on observation, and then spend the other half of the year doing documentation and model making.