Today I visited the Jan Steen 'Spice of Life' exhibition at the Mauritshuis. Jan Steen (1626-1679) was one of the funniest painters of the Dutch Golden Age. He is well known for using moralising Dutch proverbs with amusing undertones. His scenes of chaotic households also gave rise to the apparently still used expression 'a Jan Steen household' when describing a messy or boisterous scene. Jan Steen married the daughter of the Dutch painter Jan van Goyen and owned a pub for a while. I think he was a lover of life.
Here’s a classic Jan Steen complete with proverb: ‘As the old sing, so twitter the young.’ The family are celebrating the child’s baptism so the woman is getting drunk and the father (Steen himself) is teaching his son to smoke a pipe. The parrot in the corner is symbolic of the children imitating the adults bad behaviour.
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| 'As the old sing so twitter the young,' Jan Steen |
Wandering Wombs AKA Lovesickness
Another of Steen’s favourite subjects was the lovesick young woman. In the 17th century young virgins could suffer from wandering womb or furor uterinus, from the Latin meaning 'fury of the womb.' This was an uncontrollable desire and a potentially fatal disorder that medical science took seriously at the time (although I think Steen mocks the idea just a bit.) Here the doctor is called and takes the girl’s weak pulse. The treatment for this condition as published in medical journals of the time was to get married ASAP.
Another of Steen’s favourite subjects was the lovesick young woman. In the 17th century young virgins could suffer from wandering womb or furor uterinus, from the Latin meaning 'fury of the womb.' This was an uncontrollable desire and a potentially fatal disorder that medical science took seriously at the time (although I think Steen mocks the idea just a bit.) Here the doctor is called and takes the girl’s weak pulse. The treatment for this condition as published in medical journals of the time was to get married ASAP.
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| 'The Doctor's Visit,' Jan Steen |
The little boy with the dirty grin on the left below is holding an enema while his sister suffers the effects of lovesickness.
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| 'Medicines are all in vain, in treating this girl's lovesick pain' Hier baet geen medesyn, want het is minnepyn. Jan Steen |
Before you go...
There is always symbolism in the small details of Jan Steen's paintings. Behind the curtain below, everybody in the pub is having a good time, from the little munchkins playing with their pets to the old man flirting with a younger woman. You can barely see him here, but a little boy lying in the loft next to a skull is blowing bubbles. Steen is saying 'beware because before you know it your life may burst like a bubble'. Perhaps the broken eggshells in the foreground are also a reference to transience. I'd like to think he's telling us to live it up before the curtain falls.
There is always symbolism in the small details of Jan Steen's paintings. Behind the curtain below, everybody in the pub is having a good time, from the little munchkins playing with their pets to the old man flirting with a younger woman. You can barely see him here, but a little boy lying in the loft next to a skull is blowing bubbles. Steen is saying 'beware because before you know it your life may burst like a bubble'. Perhaps the broken eggshells in the foreground are also a reference to transience. I'd like to think he's telling us to live it up before the curtain falls.
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| The Life of Man, Jan Steen |
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