Der Arztbesuch in einem reichen Interieur

Nothing medical is really wrong with the young woman in the chair. Jan Steen painted the doctor's visit at least a dozen times, and the joke is always the same: the patient is not ill but lovesick. Dutch had a word for it, minnepijn, the pain of love, and 17th-century physicians claimed they could catch it by feeling the pulse or peering at a flask of urine, which is just what happens here. The doctor takes her wrist while the maid holds up the bottle. Steen fills the room with clues for anyone who cares to read them. A boy in old-fashioned costume stands in the foreground as Cupid, fitting an arrow to his bow, and a painting of Venus and Adonis, unlucky lovers, hangs on the wall.