Bordellszene

Frans van Mieris worked in Leiden, where a group of painters called the fijnschilders, the fine painters, competed to make the smoothest, most jewel-like little panels money could buy. In 1658 he turned that exquisite polish onto a distinctly unrefined subject. A soldier tips back a glass beside a woman in an inn, an oyster meal on the table between them, and every viewer of the day read the cues. Oysters were thought to stir desire, and just visible in the shadows behind the couple a pair of dogs is mating, the blunt joke that fixes exactly what kind of house this is. Panels this small and this highly finished were luxury objects, painted for wealthy collectors who enjoyed the polish and the innuendo in equal measure.