Muchacha sonriente, cortesana, sosteniendo una imagen obscena

Gerard van Honthorst had spent years in Rome soaking up the dramatic candlelit style of Caravaggio, and by 1625 he was back in Utrecht putting it to worldly use. A laughing young woman leans out of the dark, brightly lit, and holds up a small painted medallion. The image on it is bawdy, a naked woman hiding her face, with a crude Dutch caption inviting the viewer to guess her from behind. She is a prostitute, and the medallion is essentially an advertisement, a common enough thing in the Dutch towns of the period. Honthorst gives the whole encounter the same theatrical lighting a religious painter would use for a saint, the face and bare shoulder blazing out of a background of total black.