La proposición

A woman bends over her sewing in a nearly dark room, lit only by a small lamp. A man in a fur hat leans in, one hand on her shoulder, the other holding out a fistful of coins. Painted in 1631 by Judith Leyster, one of the few women admitted to the painters' guild in Haarlem, it takes a stock Dutch subject, the man buying sex, and does something unusual with it. In the standard version of this scene the woman plays along. Here she keeps her eyes down on her work and simply does not respond, and the whole mood tips from bawdy comedy into something tense and uneasy. Down near the floor you can just see the coals of a foot warmer under her skirt, a detail contemporaries would have read as a sign about the woman herself.