Old Woman Saying Grace, Known as ‘The Prayer without End’

Its popular name is The Prayer without End, and the cat explains why. An old woman sits at her table with her eyes shut and her hands pressed together, saying grace over a meal already laid out, bread, a plate of fish, a stoneware jug and a small pot with a spoon standing in it. She is in no hurry. Down at the corner of the table a cat has hooked its claws into the cloth and is pulling at it, tired of waiting. Nicolaes Maes painted this in Dordrecht around 1656, when he was about 22, and his Dutch viewers would have seen her patience as the point, a lesson in self-control and duty to God. On the shelf behind her stand an hourglass and a tin funnel, and a bunch of household keys hangs on the wall below.