Lust (Luxuria), One of the Seven Deadly Sins

In the mid-1630s, back in Antwerp, Brouwer painted a set of seven small panels, each with a single rustic figure standing for one of the Seven Deadly Sins. This one is Lust, though for a long time it was known simply as The Fat Man. He looks away, dishevelled, one hand pushed into his half-open jerkin, while a couple walk through the thinly painted dunes behind him. On the back is a seal with the arms of Don Juan José of Austria, an illegitimate son of King Philip IV of Spain, so the set had left Antwerp within the 17th century. It was broken up around 1800. The Mauritshuis bought this panel in 1897 and has since acquired a second, Pride, a man curling his moustache with scissors. The art historian Karolien de Clippel has suggested the sitter was Brouwer's friend, the engraver Paulus Pontius.