Die verkehrte Welt

By the 1660s the Dutch Republic was the richest corner of Europe, and a comfortable merchant class had money to spend and reputations to guard. Jan Steen painted them a warning dressed up as a joke. This household has come completely off its hinges, everyone giving in to appetite, and the woman smiling out at you, modeled on Steen's own wife Margriet, flirts with the man of the house while the place goes to ruin around them. On the slate at the lower right he wrote the first half of a Dutch saying, in weelde siet toe, take care in times of plenty. The unspoken second half warns of the rod. Hanging in a basket above the scene wait a crutch, a sword, and a leper's wooden clapper, the illness and ruin this comfort is inviting in.