Johanna and the Jewish Merchants

Thomas Asselijn's comedy The Spendthrift, first printed in 1693, was still a favourite with Amsterdam audiences when Troost painted this scene from it in 1741. Johanna, the wasteful wife of the title, is selling her expensive new clothes to two bearded second-hand dealers. They are really her father and her husband in disguise, come to catch her out. Asselijn wrote them as Polish Jews and used a slur of the period for them, and Troost paints the same stereotype, which the museum names plainly on its label. Around Johanna the parlour is crowded with Chinese porcelain and figurines. A ring-tailed lemur from Madagascar sits on the chair at the left, and a cat has crept under the cabinet on the right.