Delft tiles and Cupid

**Tiny images with interpretive weight.** Along the base of the wall are Delft tiles, including a Cupid figure and a traveling man. The Cupid tile, placed near the footwarmer and the maid’s skirt, has often been read within Dutch genre-painting traditions of love and desire. Liedtke argued that such details do not simply create narrative but subtly charge the apparently modest scene with social and erotic associations. **References:** Metropolitan Museum of Art essay by Walter Liedtke; Essential Vermeer catalogue entry; _Occupational Medicine_ 73, no. 6 (2023), on the man and Cupid tiles.

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