Nicolaes Maes

A woman on the stairs turns to face us, one finger to her lips, while behind her a maid flirts with a lover she believes no one can see. Nicolaes Maes painted about six versions of this joke, the pictures now known as The Eavesdropper, and they are the high point of his early work.

Maes grew up in Dordrecht, went to Amsterdam around 1648 as a teenager, and spent roughly five years in Rembrandt's studio, absorbing the master's warm shadow and red-brown tones. Back in Dordrecht he painted quiet domestic scenes of women praying, sewing, or caught listening at a doorway, often showing two rooms at once so that the act of overhearing becomes the subject.

Around 1660 he gave up genre painting entirely and turned to portraits. By the time he moved back to Amsterdam in 1673 he was the leading portraitist in the city, producing bright, elegant likenesses in a lighter, French-influenced manner that looks like the work of a different man. He kept at it until his death in 1693.