A Game of Tric Trac

In the 1630s Dutch painters turned everyday pleasures into small moral lessons, and Judith Leyster — one of the very few women admitted as a master to the Haarlem painters' guild — was fluent in the trick. The game on the table is tric-trac, the period name for backgammon, and it carried a warning: like drinking and smoking, gambling stood for idleness and wasted time. The woman holds a glass of wine and passes a pipe across to her partner, who catches your eye with a grin that hints the two are playing at more than a board game. Leyster stages it all in sharp light against deep shadow, so the little scene of vice glows out of the surrounding dark.