The Life of Man

Across the top of this crowded inn Jan Steen painted a curtain pulled aside, as if the scene were a play and we had just been let into the theatre. Below it, young and old are eating, drinking, playing games and flirting.

The point of the play sits in a corner most viewers miss. Up by the window, in the dark attic above the room, a boy is blowing soap bubbles next to a skull. The bubble was an old emblem of how short life is, going back to the Latin saying homo bulla, man is a bubble. The party below goes on without noticing him.

Collectors in The Hague wanted the picture. In 1733 it sold at auction there for 515 guilders, and in 1764 it fetched 1,745 guilders, bought on behalf of the young Prince William V of Orange.