A Boy Blowing Bubbles

A child blowing soap bubbles was a familiar reminder of death in Dutch painting. The Latin saying homo bulla, man is a bubble, had been collected by the scholar Erasmus in his book of proverbs, and painters used the bubble as shorthand for how quickly a life can burst.

Caspar Netscher painted this boy in 1670, on a panel smaller than a postcard. The Mauritshuis singles out the shining bubbles, and notes that the lively little boy makes the old message all the more painful. Only the last letters of the signature can still be read, beside the date. The painting belongs to a private owner and has been on loan to the Mauritshuis since 2011.