Now housed at The Louvre in Paris, France, The Astronomer is an exquisite painting by the Dutch master of light, Vermeer. This painting depicts a pensive astronomer reaching out towards a globe while facing a stained window that bathes the room in golden yellow light.  This painting, like most of his other works, is extremely intimate and creates an impossibly perfect rendition of how a single source of light illuminates a space - this painstaking realism being the prime hallmark of Vermeer as one of the greatest painters of all time.