Bad Company

The Louvre bought this small panel in 1881 as The Prodigal Son among the Courtesans, though its own inventory called it Bad Company. The parable of the son who wastes his inheritance on loose living was a favourite with Dutch painters, and Jan Steen, working around 1665 to 1670, retells it as an evening in a brothel.

The young man in red has drunk himself to sleep with his head in a woman's lap. While she keeps him there, a girl in a yellow gown leans over him and passes something on a chain to the smiling old procuress. Two musicians play on at the table. Playing cards lie scattered across the floor beside his hat and a jug. The Louvre reads the cards as an old comparison Steen's buyers knew well, between chance in love and chance at the gaming table.