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The Lovesick Maiden
The Lovesick Maiden is a c. 1660 oil-on-canvas genre painting by Jan Steen. It shows a young woman suffering from love-sickness surrounded by her doctor and a maid-servant. It is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Jan Steen's The Lovesick Maiden depicts an indoor scene in a room belonging to a bourgeois family. The otherwise dark room has soft light illuminating the figures from a source in the front left side of the room, hidden behind the viewer's line of sight. A secondary source of light from the open doors allow additional illumination to flood the scene.
The focal point of this piece exists in the middle foreground where the three central figures are located. As the main subject, a young woman is seated on a chair with her left foot resting on a stool. Next to her, there is a man to the left known to be a doctor, holding the maiden's wrist with one hand and a bag with his other. To the right, an older woman stands behind the maiden, with her gaze fixed on the doctor.
In the foreground on the floor, there is an arrangement of items: a cloth, a bed warmer, a brazier, and a yellow basket containing a glass bottle. The combination of the glass bottle, commonly used to hold urine, and the brazier indicate the question of whether the young maiden is pregnant. In testing urine for determining pregnancy, the urine was first heated by the brazier. The righthand portion of the foreground contains a small dog curled up, asleep on a pillow next to the young woman's footstool.
The true middle ground of the painting contains, on the right; a chair and four-poster canopy bed, of which a curtain is drawn, revealing the bed as empty. In the middle, left of the bed is a table with a cloth, atop sits a vase and bowl, above the table hangs a black chandelier. In the left portion of the middle ground a statue of cupid resides on top of the doorway.
The background consists of the foyer and the landscape. In the foyer, two small dogs are seen making mating advances. The dream-like landscape of the far background indicates possible influence from Jan Van Goyen, talented and prominent landscape painter and father-in-law to Steen.
There are two interpretations that explain at length the context, themes, and iconography present in The Lovesick Maiden and other paintings by Steen, consistent with the doctor's visit genre theme: Lovesickness, and hysteria. The first interpretation derived from this work is the theme of lovesickness. This theory has long been popular among many art historians and museum entries such as the description provided for this work by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the piece resides. The second interpretation of the context surrounding this piece originates from the ancient medical and social belief in hysteria. Laurinda Dixon introduced this second interpretation in 1995 with her book Perilous Chastity: Women and Illness in Pre-Enlightenment Art and Medicine. Dixon traces the origins of the Illness hysteria and provides a background for its prevalence in 17th Century Dutch art.
When viewing Steen's Doctors visit genre paintings, at first glance it may seem like a normal doctor's visit, but on closer inspection there are many clues and iconographic symbols in the scene alluding to the idea that this piece is part of a lengthy 17th-century Dutch tradition of "doctor's visit" paintings that feature a comical theater scene of a quack and a love-sick maiden These recurring details or clues can be seen in the doctor in ridiculous theatrical dress, the nearby bed with an open curtain, the dog-on-a-pillow, the bed-warmer or burning coals, and the not-overly-concerned third person looking on. Jan Steen painted several of these, as did many of his contemporaries in Leiden. As is common in Steen paintings, his usage of a common genre often includes an underlying comedic message regarding the matter at hand, and in this case it is the pair of copulating dogs in the doorway. Though the specific theater scene is now lost, the main theme has been reconstructed: there is no "cure" for the young woman, because she is suffering from "love-sickness". In Steen's series of doctor's visit paintings, is unclear whether he is directing his judgement on the foolish doctor or the lovesick woman.
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The Lovesick Maiden
The Lovesick Maiden is a c. 1660 oil-on-canvas genre painting by Jan Steen. It shows a young woman suffering from love-sickness surrounded by her doctor and a maid-servant. It is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Jan Steen's The Lovesick Maiden depicts an indoor scene in a room belonging to a bourgeois family. The otherwise dark room has soft light illuminating the figures from a source in the front left side of the room, hidden behind the viewer's line of sight. A secondary source of light from the open doors allow additional illumination to flood the scene.
The focal point of this piece exists in the middle foreground where the three central figures are located. As the main subject, a young woman is seated on a chair with her left foot resting on a stool. Next to her, there is a man to the left known to be a doctor, holding the maiden's wrist with one hand and a bag with his other. To the right, an older woman stands behind the maiden, with her gaze fixed on the doctor.
In the foreground on the floor, there is an arrangement of items: a cloth, a bed warmer, a brazier, and a yellow basket containing a glass bottle. The combination of the glass bottle, commonly used to hold urine, and the brazier indicate the question of whether the young maiden is pregnant. In testing urine for determining pregnancy, the urine was first heated by the brazier. The righthand portion of the foreground contains a small dog curled up, asleep on a pillow next to the young woman's footstool.
The true middle ground of the painting contains, on the right; a chair and four-poster canopy bed, of which a curtain is drawn, revealing the bed as empty. In the middle, left of the bed is a table with a cloth, atop sits a vase and bowl, above the table hangs a black chandelier. In the left portion of the middle ground a statue of cupid resides on top of the doorway.
The background consists of the foyer and the landscape. In the foyer, two small dogs are seen making mating advances. The dream-like landscape of the far background indicates possible influence from Jan Van Goyen, talented and prominent landscape painter and father-in-law to Steen.
There are two interpretations that explain at length the context, themes, and iconography present in The Lovesick Maiden and other paintings by Steen, consistent with the doctor's visit genre theme: Lovesickness, and hysteria. The first interpretation derived from this work is the theme of lovesickness. This theory has long been popular among many art historians and museum entries such as the description provided for this work by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the piece resides. The second interpretation of the context surrounding this piece originates from the ancient medical and social belief in hysteria. Laurinda Dixon introduced this second interpretation in 1995 with her book Perilous Chastity: Women and Illness in Pre-Enlightenment Art and Medicine. Dixon traces the origins of the Illness hysteria and provides a background for its prevalence in 17th Century Dutch art.
When viewing Steen's Doctors visit genre paintings, at first glance it may seem like a normal doctor's visit, but on closer inspection there are many clues and iconographic symbols in the scene alluding to the idea that this piece is part of a lengthy 17th-century Dutch tradition of "doctor's visit" paintings that feature a comical theater scene of a quack and a love-sick maiden These recurring details or clues can be seen in the doctor in ridiculous theatrical dress, the nearby bed with an open curtain, the dog-on-a-pillow, the bed-warmer or burning coals, and the not-overly-concerned third person looking on. Jan Steen painted several of these, as did many of his contemporaries in Leiden. As is common in Steen paintings, his usage of a common genre often includes an underlying comedic message regarding the matter at hand, and in this case it is the pair of copulating dogs in the doorway. Though the specific theater scene is now lost, the main theme has been reconstructed: there is no "cure" for the young woman, because she is suffering from "love-sickness". In Steen's series of doctor's visit paintings, is unclear whether he is directing his judgement on the foolish doctor or the lovesick woman.