Now, if you follow me through into the next room, we come to two paintings by a 17th-century Dutch artist who was both widely ____ and reasonably successful during his lifetime. Born in Leiden in 1629, Gabriel Metsu moved to Amsterdam ____ 1655 and produced over forty major works. Sadly, though, he died at the age of 37, at a time when his career was going particularly well, and since then he has been rather forgotten, which seems a bit of a shame, to be ____. These two pieces were ____ to be hung together as companion pieces. In the painting on the left, a young man is writing a letter and on the right, we see a young woman reading a letter. The viewers ____ to understand that he is composing a love letter to her and that here she is ____ it. On the surface, these may look like fairly ____, fairly realistic pieces, but look more carefully and you soon realise they are actually very open to ____. The man ____ a member of the upper-middle classes, and his surroundings create the ____ that he’s well-travelled: through the open window, we can see a globe in the room behind him and there’s an expensive Turkish rug on his table. To his right, there’s an Italian-style ____ hanging on the wall, which ____ he’s a man of the world. Meanwhile, the woman, who is also expensively dressed, ____ to belong more to the domestic world. Painted in ____ colours, she looks calm and content as she reads.

Upper Intermediate, Unit 1, audio 6

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