Even his darks shine. In Young Woman with a Pitcher, circa 1658-60, the subject holds a gilt water pitcher while opening a casement window whose leaded pane looks just like a 1912 Mondrian apple tree turned on its side. It is also reflected in the pitcher, whose basin gathers beneath its rim an exquisitely ordered mosaic of reflections from the tabletop. And then there is the white cotton that drapes her head and shoulders, whose every starched plane and level of translucency is observed, light filtering through a small, soft structure that's as satisfying as one of Cezanne's hillsides. Sight has taken over from narrative.
Nothing really happens.
Time has stopped. Yet for all his classicism, his tense repose and care with proportion and interval, Vermeer can be a theatrical painter. It's just that the theatricality is cooled down by being shifted from people to props, leaving the peace of the figures undisturbed. It's like the moment when a curtain rises to show an actor in reverie ignoring the audience. A vivid example is The Music Lesson, circa 1662-64.