Another picture of the period immediately following 1656 is _The Cook_, in the Rijks Museum. She is standing in front of a whitish wall, lighted from a window on the left, pouring milk into a red earthenware pitcher that stands upon the table. The latter hides the lower part of her figure, which is clad in a lemon-colored body, reddish-brown skirt, and deep-blue apron, while a white cap covers her head. Here in these details--cap against light wall, prominent note of blue, the three-quarter length of figure, the cool lighting from a window on the left, lastly, the plasticity of the form--we find the ingredients of Vermeer’s later manner; but as yet the brushwork has not the limpid exquisiteness, compressed yet fluent, of his full development. On the contrary, it is broad, inclined to roughness, loose and free, magnificent in the gusto with which it has been applied, and vigorously stimulating in its appeal to sense imagination. Also in the Rijks Museum is a picture which recalls the fact that De Hooch was a member of the Guild of St. Luke in Delft from 1655 to 1657, and that, while he benefited most by contact with Vermeer, the latter was also somewhat influenced by him. For in this picture, _The Letter_, Vermeer seems to have experimented, not over-successfully, with De Hooch’s device of showing one room beyond another. For an anteroom opens into two others, side by side, in one of which on the black and white marble floor a lady is seated in an amber dress trimmed with ermine. She pauses in her playing of a lute to take a letter from a servant. The picture is exceedingly choice in color and technique, but the composition is a little awkward in its division into two parts--a device, by the way, that recalls De Hooch’s _The Visit_, owned by Mrs. Henry O. Havemeyer, the composition of which is open to a similar criticism. Again, in the Rijks Museum is _Young Woman Reading a Letter_. Here in the delicate modeling of the face one observes the exquisite gray tones that distinguish so many of the examples of Vermeer’s fully developed style. Also notable is the arrangement of the composition, the girl facing left, her feet hidden by a chair and table, the latter forming a dark spot so as to increase the luminosity on the figure and the wall. It is repeated very closely in _The Lady with a Pearl Necklace_ of the Berlin Gallery, where chair and table occupy the same [Illustration: THE COOK JOHANNES (JAN) VERMEER SIX COLLECTION NOW IN RIJKS MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM]