Vecchia che sonnecchia

Nicolaes Maes was barely 20 and just out of Rembrandt's Amsterdam studio when he settled back in Dordrecht and began painting quiet interiors like this one, around 1655. An old woman has fallen asleep over an open book. It reads as a peaceful domestic scene until you notice the details Maes weighted it with. The book is a Bible, left unread. The household keys, standing for her worldly duties, hang idle on the wall, and a lace-making cushion sits untouched at her side. To a Dutch viewer this was gentle instruction about sloth, dressed up as a portrait of rest. Maes soon dropped these moral pictures almost entirely and spent the rest of his career painting fashionable portraits instead.