The higher range of clouds is dark and threatening but a strip of blue sky separates this ominous range from puffy white ranks of cumulus, which recede into the distance before disappearing behind the Delft skyline. The sunlight responsible for this transformation significantly picks out the tower of the Nieuwe Kerk, or New Church, where Willem I, father of the nation, rests in his tomb. The pale yellow of the tower defines to the right a blue gable adjacent to a biscuit yellow wall. Blue and yellow are the colours we associate with the work of Vermeer and his use of them, particularly in the church tower, emphasises the triangular composition, which passes up through the highest point in the cumulus cloud formation, a little to the right of the heart of the painting.