The Good Mother

In Turin this small panel is called La buona madre, the good mother, and the title points to an idea Dutch readers of the 17th century knew well. In 1625 the poet Jacob Cats, one of the most widely read writers in the Dutch Republic, published Houwelick, a long book in verse on marriage that follows a woman from girlhood to widowhood. Its part on the mother urges women to nurse their own children, and it calls it wrong for a husband to hire a stranger as wet nurse. Cats's books were reprinted again and again, and around 1670, when Frans van Mieris painted this picture in Leiden, the ideal was still familiar. A young woman sits at an arched stone window with her dress open at the breast, while an older child bends to kiss a swaddled baby. On the green cloth over the sill lies a bread roll.