It places a canvas in front of a high window depicting the tower of a close building and a street below.

The list of similar works can easily be extended to include such paintings as The Key to the Fields (1936), its 1964 reincarnation Evening Falls and the 1942 work The Domain of Arnheim, all of which feature broken windows whose shattered glass pieces on the floor still show the outside world they used to conceal.

In these works, a painting is placed on an easel in front of a window or on a balcony with a simple landscape in the background.

At first, one automatically assumes that the painting on the easel depicts the portion of the landscape outside the window that it hides from view.

It is perhaps to this repeating cycle, in which the viewer, even against his will, sees the one as real and the other as representation, that Magritte's title makes reference.