‘I sought comfort in the usual places. I prayed, sometimes hourly, kneeling beside her grave. I tried so hard to eat, but the food refused to stay down and its reappearance left me weak and light-headed. I grew hopelessly thin. My father began to suspect I would wither away and die. He went so far as to purchase a grave slab within the local kerk next to Mother’s, so that we might spend eternity in each other’s company. Nobody understood my pain, except for Crispijn. He sat on my bed each day and read me stories and told me about the constellations, how stars die and are reborn. He was gentle and encouraging, never pushy. Ever so slowly, he convinced me there might be a reason to stay.’ She sighs. ‘When at last I recovered, I was shocked to discover almost a year had passed while I hovered between life and death. In less than a month, Crispijn and I would be sixteen. The house was still in mourning, the mirrors covered, the furniture draped with black crepe. But I felt somehow hopeful, filled with God’s blessings. I was lucky to have a brother who cared enough about me that he’d fought death on my behalf. I was determined to mark his sacrifice. So I blew the dust off my brushes, removed the cobwebs from the ground pigments in their pots and set to work. I’d intended to paint us sitting together in the form of Apollo and Artemis, but as I was mixing the colours, an image of Crispijn materialised that was so strong and self-assured it was as if God had shot it directly into my mind. I painted it exactly as I saw it, working late into the night. The morning of our birthday, I presented it to him here in the studio, and here it has remained ever since, despite numerous offers from my father’s friends and collectors to buy it.’

She tugs the rope, the curtains slide apart and Anna sees Crispijn’s face, decades younger, leap out of the canvas. Catharina has painted him posing beside a globe on a wooden stand, the sphere engraved with animals from the Greek zodiac and sailing ships flying the red, white and blue banners of the Dutch Republic. The dark eye of a telescope lens glints in the light from a table lamp whose rays fall on the cover of the family Bible, the crest embossed in delicate gold leaf. A spray of flowers droops next to a grinning skull, offering the usual painterly reminders of impermanence and the futility of earthly pleasures.

‘What is your opinion of it?’ Catharina says.