The Slippers

Dutch painters of the 1650s liked to show a house through its doorways, one room opening onto the next. The Louvre counts three doors and three rooms here, and reads them as a story set out in stages. Nobody is at home. A broom leans unused against the wall of the hallway, a pair of slippers lies abandoned on the threshold, keys hang from a door, and a candle and a book stand on a table in the far room. Scholars have read these as signs of a household left to drift. The picture on the far wall points the same way. It repeats a well-known scene by Gerard ter Borch, long nicknamed The Paternal Admonition, which the Louvre calls a far from innocent gallant conversation. The museum lists the painting as attributed to Samuel van Hoogstraten and dates it between 1650 and 1675.