Peasant Parlour with Noble Visitors

The visitors have come out from town. A party of well-dressed people has walked into a farmhouse room, and van Cleve lets their dealings with the household play out across an oak panel more than a metre wide. On the right a noble couple feed a small child held up by a nurse. On the left the peasants hand a gentleman something to drink, while he makes a pointed approach to the maid standing in the middle of the room. The museum dates the panel to around 1566 and sees in it the many sides of the bond between the town patriciate and country people. A closely related scene of a visit to a farm was painted by Jan Brueghel the Elder, a Flemish painter of the next generation.