DOI issue:
Część II / Part II. Neerlandica
DOI article:Borusowski, Piotr: Podglądając przez dziurkę od klucza: perspectyfkas Leonaerta Bramera
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.45360#0164
Piotr Borusowski Peeping through the Keyhole: Leonaert Bramer’s Perspectyfkas
163
evaluate the depicted scene.12 Showing this kind of figures comes from an Early Renaissance
tradition. It was recommended by Leon Battista Alberti in his treaty written in Latin, De Pictura
(On Painting) from 1435 ; Italian edition - Della pittura - was prepared by him a year later: “[...]
I like there to be someone in the ‘historia’ who tells the spectators what is going on, and either
beckons them with his hand to look, or with ferocious expression and forbidding glance chaL
lenges them not to come near, as if he wished their business to be secret, or points to some
danger or remarkable thing in the picture, or by his gestures invites you to laugh or weep with
them.”13 Their gestures or facial expressions indicate the correct reading of the work’s moral
message. This seems to be exactly the role of the main figure in Nicolaes Maes’s The Idle Servant
(fig. 4).14 The mistress of the house, standing in the middle of the composition, looks at the view-
ers with an ironic smile. Her gesture, used by seventeenth-century rhetoricians when presenting
proof in support of their arguments,15 draws the viewer’s attention to the servant’s sloppiness.16
The dishes left around on the floor and the cat stealing meat (prepared for the diners seen in
the background) indicate her indolence. Due to the narrative and compositional similarities
and the short span of time in which they were created,17 the group of other Maes’s paintings
showing eavesdroppers are considered works bearing a similar didactic message.18 They have
been the subject of many interpretations.19 The figures looking at the viewer, smile gently and
put their index fingers to their lips in a gesture of hushing. They draw attention to what is going
on in the other part of the house; in five cases to the servants who, having neglected their du-
ties, are receiving suitors and in one case (most probably) to a domestic quarrel. Those were the
subjects that entertained the owners of this kind of paintings - members of the upper class who
found the depicted stories amusing. These representations have a broader context, and should
12 William W. Robinson, “The ‘Eavesdroppers’ and Related Paintings by Nicolaes Maes,” in Holländische
Genremalerei im 1/. Jahrhundert. Symposium Berlin 1984, Henning Bock and Thomas W. Gaehtgens, eds (Berlin:
Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1987), p. 303. Jahrbuch Preußischer Kulturbesitz, 4; see also Victor I. Stoichita, The Self-Aware
Image (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 6 and 62-3.
13 Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, Martin Kemp, ed., Penguin, London 1991, pp. 77-8. See Victor
I. Stoichita, L’instauration du tableau : métapeinture à l’aube des temps modernes, Méridiens Klincksieck, Paris 1993,
pp. 101-2.
14 1655, The National Gallery, London.
15 See supposedly the most famous examples, portraits of Cornelis Anslo by Rembrandt - a print from
1640 and the painting from 1641 (Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin).
16 Robinson, “The ‘Eavesdroppers’...,” op. cit., p. 291.
17 Ibid.; see also Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting, Jane Iandola Watkins, ed., exh.
cat., Philadelphia Museum of Art, 18 March - 13 May 1984; Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen Preussischer
Kulturbesitz, Berlin (West), 8 June -12 August 1984; Royal Academy of Arts, London, 7 September -18 November
1984 (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1984), pp. 242-3, cat. no. 67, pl. 99.
18 A Woman Scolding, with a Maidservant Listening, 1655, Guildhall Galleiy, London; Lovers, with a Woman
Listening, ca. 1655-1657, Apsley House, Wellington Museum, London; The Eavesdropper, 1657, Dordrechts Museum; The
Listening Housewife, 1656, Wallace Collection, London; The Listening Housewife, 1655, The Royal Collection, London;
Lovers, with an Old Man Listening, ca. 1655-1657, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
19 Above all Wolfgang Kemp, “Kunstwerk und Betrachter. Der rezeptionsästhetische Ansatz,” in Hans
Belting et al., Kunstgeschichte. Eine Einführung (Berlin: Reimer, 1985), pp. 203-21; Martha Hollander, An entrance
for the eyes. Space and meaning in seventeenth-century Dutch art (Berkeley-London: University of California Press,
2002), pp. 103-48; Ziemba, op. cit., p. 163 (note 386 - with further literature); Georgina Cole, ‘“Wavering Between
Two Worlds.’ The Doorway in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting” [online], Philament vol. 9 (2006)
[access: 16 February 2011], pp. 18-37, available at World Wide Web: <http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/publications/
philament/issue9~_pdfs/COLE_Doorways.pd£>; Wayne Franits, Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting (New
Haven-London: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 152-6.
163
evaluate the depicted scene.12 Showing this kind of figures comes from an Early Renaissance
tradition. It was recommended by Leon Battista Alberti in his treaty written in Latin, De Pictura
(On Painting) from 1435 ; Italian edition - Della pittura - was prepared by him a year later: “[...]
I like there to be someone in the ‘historia’ who tells the spectators what is going on, and either
beckons them with his hand to look, or with ferocious expression and forbidding glance chaL
lenges them not to come near, as if he wished their business to be secret, or points to some
danger or remarkable thing in the picture, or by his gestures invites you to laugh or weep with
them.”13 Their gestures or facial expressions indicate the correct reading of the work’s moral
message. This seems to be exactly the role of the main figure in Nicolaes Maes’s The Idle Servant
(fig. 4).14 The mistress of the house, standing in the middle of the composition, looks at the view-
ers with an ironic smile. Her gesture, used by seventeenth-century rhetoricians when presenting
proof in support of their arguments,15 draws the viewer’s attention to the servant’s sloppiness.16
The dishes left around on the floor and the cat stealing meat (prepared for the diners seen in
the background) indicate her indolence. Due to the narrative and compositional similarities
and the short span of time in which they were created,17 the group of other Maes’s paintings
showing eavesdroppers are considered works bearing a similar didactic message.18 They have
been the subject of many interpretations.19 The figures looking at the viewer, smile gently and
put their index fingers to their lips in a gesture of hushing. They draw attention to what is going
on in the other part of the house; in five cases to the servants who, having neglected their du-
ties, are receiving suitors and in one case (most probably) to a domestic quarrel. Those were the
subjects that entertained the owners of this kind of paintings - members of the upper class who
found the depicted stories amusing. These representations have a broader context, and should
12 William W. Robinson, “The ‘Eavesdroppers’ and Related Paintings by Nicolaes Maes,” in Holländische
Genremalerei im 1/. Jahrhundert. Symposium Berlin 1984, Henning Bock and Thomas W. Gaehtgens, eds (Berlin:
Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1987), p. 303. Jahrbuch Preußischer Kulturbesitz, 4; see also Victor I. Stoichita, The Self-Aware
Image (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 6 and 62-3.
13 Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, Martin Kemp, ed., Penguin, London 1991, pp. 77-8. See Victor
I. Stoichita, L’instauration du tableau : métapeinture à l’aube des temps modernes, Méridiens Klincksieck, Paris 1993,
pp. 101-2.
14 1655, The National Gallery, London.
15 See supposedly the most famous examples, portraits of Cornelis Anslo by Rembrandt - a print from
1640 and the painting from 1641 (Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin).
16 Robinson, “The ‘Eavesdroppers’...,” op. cit., p. 291.
17 Ibid.; see also Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting, Jane Iandola Watkins, ed., exh.
cat., Philadelphia Museum of Art, 18 March - 13 May 1984; Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen Preussischer
Kulturbesitz, Berlin (West), 8 June -12 August 1984; Royal Academy of Arts, London, 7 September -18 November
1984 (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1984), pp. 242-3, cat. no. 67, pl. 99.
18 A Woman Scolding, with a Maidservant Listening, 1655, Guildhall Galleiy, London; Lovers, with a Woman
Listening, ca. 1655-1657, Apsley House, Wellington Museum, London; The Eavesdropper, 1657, Dordrechts Museum; The
Listening Housewife, 1656, Wallace Collection, London; The Listening Housewife, 1655, The Royal Collection, London;
Lovers, with an Old Man Listening, ca. 1655-1657, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
19 Above all Wolfgang Kemp, “Kunstwerk und Betrachter. Der rezeptionsästhetische Ansatz,” in Hans
Belting et al., Kunstgeschichte. Eine Einführung (Berlin: Reimer, 1985), pp. 203-21; Martha Hollander, An entrance
for the eyes. Space and meaning in seventeenth-century Dutch art (Berkeley-London: University of California Press,
2002), pp. 103-48; Ziemba, op. cit., p. 163 (note 386 - with further literature); Georgina Cole, ‘“Wavering Between
Two Worlds.’ The Doorway in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting” [online], Philament vol. 9 (2006)
[access: 16 February 2011], pp. 18-37, available at World Wide Web: <http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/publications/
philament/issue9~_pdfs/COLE_Doorways.pd£>; Wayne Franits, Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting (New
Haven-London: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 152-6.