He who walks down the street, over there, is immersed in the multiplicity of noises, murmurs, rhythms […] By contrast, from the window, the noises distinguish themselves, the flow separate out, rhythms respond to one another. Towards the right, below, a traffic light. On red, cars at a standstill, the pedestrians cross, feeble murmurings, footsteps, confused voices. Henri Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis, 2004, p.38.

There comes a moment when orientations shift, as it is not from outside that observation happens anymore, but from inside, from the immovable window. In paintings such as ‘Goethe at the Window’ (1787) by Johann Heinrich Tischbein, ‘Woman at a Window’ (1822) by Caspar David Friedrich, or ‘Early Morning’ (1858) by Moritz von Schwind, subjects are seen from behind, gazing out of an open window while details of trees, mountains or buildings are barely visible through them, as the painters are more concerned with the interiors. Later on, in Gustave Caillebotte’s impressionist paintings, we begin to see details of Parisian streets from balconies, yet the entire spectacle seen by the subject is still not shown to us.

More recently, in the last decade, Canadian painter Shaun Downey depicted lonely, contemplative women in their apartments, some looking through windows in serene and elegant compositions either focused on specific elements happening outside, sometimes even using binoculars, or simply allowing their mind to wander freely, probably consumed by their own thoughts in this lonesome activity of introspective nature. Before Downey, American painter Edward Hopper captured memorable urban scenes that convey the loneliness of his subjects. During the Covid-19 crisis, his painting ‘Cape Cod Morning’ (1950) was widely shared on social media, portraying a tense woman looking out a bay window, inciting the viewer to contemplate the uncertainties that might come in such isolated place—the fear of an unknown virus. When only half of a story is shown to us, suppositions grow stronger in the imaginative mind.