The Tooth Puller

Gerrit Dou painted this in Leiden in the early 1630s, when he was about 20, on a wooden panel barely a third of a metre tall. An old practitioner in a fur-trimmed gown bends over his patient, who has sunk back in a chair with his legs stretched across the floor and his hands clenched. Daylight falls in from the arched window onto the chair, the basket and a dropped hat. On the table behind them lie a skull and a violin, and the Louvre suggests the little scene may carry a second meaning, about vanity, pain and patience, perhaps even the sense of touch. Louis XIV acquired it after 1683, and by 1709 it was at Marly, his retreat near Versailles. In 1797 it was recorded at Versailles under the name of Staveren, a Leiden painter who followed Dou's manner.