Jan Steen’s Histories
How to cite
Van Suchtelen, Ariane. “Jan Steen’s Histories” (2021). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 3rd ed. Edited by Arthur K.
Wheelock Jr. and Lara Yeager-Crasselt. New York, 2020–23. https://www.theleidencollection.com/archive/ (archived
December 2023).
A PDF of every version of this essay is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive is managed by apermanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrative occurs.

© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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The human condition was an inexhaustible source of inspiration for Jan Steen(1626–79). He painted comical scenes of dissolute households, merrymakers at inns,
quack doctors, lovesick girls, children up to mischief, and parents setting a poor
example for their offspring. Steen depicted stories and anecdotes about people andtheir daily concerns, their shortcomings, joys, and sorrows. His paintings arecharacterized by playful ambiguity and humor. The artist succeeded better than anyone
at poking fun at human vices and weaknesses. In fact, his amusing genre scenes madehim one of the most popular painters of the Dutch seventeenth century.
Steen’s aspirations, however, went even further. He sought his subject matter not onlyin everyday life around him, but also in written sources: the Bible, the apocryphal

Fig 1. Jan Steen, The Adoration of
the Shepherds, ca. 1660, oil oncanvas, 53 x 64 cm, Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam, inv. no. SK-A- 3509.

books of the Old Testament, classical mythology, and ancient Roman history.[1] Inthem he found stories, called histories in his day, with which he could expand hisrepertoire as a figure painter—stories with a variety of characters, like outsize versionsof real life. He portrayed a wide range of historical subjects in the course of his career.
As in his genre scenes, he lavished attention on the interactions between the many
figures and on their emotions. Steen preferred stories with comic as well as moralizing
potential, in which someone is mocked and matters get out of hand. He favored scenesof feasts and banquets, tales of love and betrayal. Even more than in his genre scenes,
in his histories Steen paraded a motley crew of theatrical characters dressed in colorful
costumes. A beguiling young woman is often the center of attention. Children andcomical characters appear in secondary scenes, and sometimes—just as incontemporary theater—they make contact with the viewer through their gaze andgestures. With Steen, the line between genre and history is not always sharply drawn.

Fig 2. Jan Steen, The Worship of
the Golden Calf, ca. 1674–77, oilon canvas, 178.4 x 155.6 cm, North
Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh(acquired with funds from the Stateof North Carolina), inv. no. 52-958,© Bridgeman Images

Born in Leiden in 1626, Steen moved back and forth between his native city and The
Hague, Delft, Warmond, and Haarlem (see the full biography by Piet Bakker in thiscatalogue). Early on, when Steen specialized in the comic genre, he painted only theoccasional history scene, usually of a traditional biblical theme like The Adoration of
the Shepherds (fig 1). It was not until the second half of his career, from the mid-1660s
onward, when he lived in Haarlem and later in Leiden again, that Steen’s production ofhistories took off. He preferred major narrative themes from the Old Testament, suchas The Worship of the Golden Calf (fig 2) and The Wrath of Ahasuerus (fig 3), andsubjects from the New Testament, like the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man in The
Leiden Collection (fig 4). Steen also painted mythological stories, such as The Leiden

Fig 3. Jan Steen, The Wrath of
Ahasuerus, ca. 1671–1673, oil oncanvas, 129 x 167 cm, The Barber
Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham,
inv. no. 39.22, © Barber Institute ofFine Arts / The Henry Barber Trust/ Bridgeman Images.

Collection’s Sacrifice of Iphigenia (fig 5), and subjects derived from Roman history,
for instance Banquet of Anthony and Cleopatra (fig 6), also in The Leiden Collection,
which he depicted four times. The wide range of different subjects Steen treatedbespeaks his ambition as a history painter, evincing great creativity in regularlychoosing themes that his predecessors had not, or had rarely, portrayed.[2] While he© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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depicted some subjects only once, he revisited others repeatedly. Around 75 histories
by Jan Steen are still known, representing about one sixth of his extant oeuvre, which isestimated at around 450 paintings.[3]Steen’s three history scenes in The Leiden Collection date from the prolific 1670s, thelast decade of his life, when he had settled once again in his native Leiden. This essay
focuses on these three major works (described in detail by Wouter Kloek in thiscatalogue), providing a broader insight into Steen’s incomparable oeuvre of lively andcolorful history paintings, which, through their theatrical and comic emphasis on
human shortcomings, warrant a position of their own within the broad and varied
spectrum of Dutch history painting.

A Wide Range of Historical Subjects

Fig 4. Jan Steen, Lazarus and theRich Man or "In Luxury Beware,"ca. 1677, oil on canvas, 80.3 x 64.8
cm, The Leiden Collection, New
York, inv. no. JS-106.

Sacrifice of Iphigenia (fig 5) is an important touchstone in Steen’s oeuvre of history
paintings, not only for its monumental size and original, humorous portrayal of the wellknown story, but also because it is dated, which is rare for paintings by Steen. He
painted this ambitious picture in 1671, a year after he returned to Leiden for the lasttime in his peripatetic career. Equally exceptional is that we know the identity of theseventeenth-century (presumably the first) owner of the painting, namely Willem
Jacobsz van Heemskerk (1613–1692), a prominent Leiden draper who was also active
as a glass engraver, poet, and playwright. Given the painting’s size, it is, moreover,likely that Steen made it on commission for Van Heemskerk—after all, it would seemFig 5. Jan Steen, Sacrifice ofIphigenia, 1671, oil on canvas,
134.6 x 172.7 cm, The Leiden
Collection, New York, inv. no.
JS-112.

pointless for the artist to invest time and money painting such a large and therefore
expensive picture if its sale were uncertain.[4]The painting features the dramatic story of the Greek commander Agamemnon, who
was forced by the enraged goddess Diana to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia so that hecould set sail for Troy. Steen used the story to paint a brilliant sacrificial scene set in
antiquity, with a motley crew of theatrical figures surrounding the young victim at theheart of the composition. With her arms crossed in front of her body and her eyes
closed, Iphigenia kneels before the altar from which a thick plume of smoke rises
toward Diana, depicted as a statue sitting at the entrance to her temple.[5] Iphigenia is

Fig 6. Jan Steen, Banquet of
Anthony and Cleopatra, ca.
1673–75, oil on canvas, 82.1 x
107.8 cm, The Leiden Collection,
New York, inv. no. JS-107.

an anchor of peace in the midst of a crowd of gesticulating figures that are portrayedwith a great sense of humor. Primary among these is the executioner who, with a broad
grin and bulging eyes animating his face, clearly relishes the idea of cutting Iphigenia’s
throat with his sharp knife, unaware that Diana will ultimately intervene and have a doe
sacrificed instead. On the right, Iphigenia’s father, Agamemnon, overcome by remorseand grief, sits hunched over in his throne, seemingly unreachable for the figures
crowding around him.
Various printmakers and painters had already depicted the well-known tale ofFig 7. Jan Steen, The Mocking of
Samson, ca. 1675–76, oil on canvas,
65 x 82 cm, Koninklijk Museum
voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp,© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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Iphigenia’s sacrifice before Steen executed his imposing work. This episode, which
was central to Euripides’s play Iphigenia in Aulis (translated into Latin by Erasmus),inv. no. 338, © www.artinflanders,photo Hugo Maertens.

also appears in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Importantly for Steen, in 1617 this story wasfeatured in Iphigenia-treurspel, a play by the Amsterdam dramatist Samuel Coster(1579–1665), who used it to comment on the conflict between the liberal and orthodox
factions in the Calvinist church in the Dutch Republic. In Coster’s play, Agamemnon’s
choice to sacrifice his own daughter served to reference the uncompromising religious
politics then imperiling the country.[6] Orthodox Amsterdam clergymen objected
strenuously to Coster’s play, and in 1630 they succeeded in banning all performancesof this theatrical piece. As Wouter Kloek has argued, it is entirely possible that Steendevised the theme of his painting in collaboration with his learned fellow townsman
Van Heemskerk, who belonged to the liberal Remonstrant faction of the church.

Fig 8. Jan Steen, Samson and
Delilah, 1668, oil on canvas, 67.5 x
82 cm, Los Angeles County
Museum of Art (Gift of the
Ahmanson Foundation), inv. no. M
8764.

Steen’s painting, dated 1671, was likely made as a reference to Coster’s forbidden play,although it does not reflect any specific scene from it. Sacrifice of Iphigenia may well
be a commentary on the precarious political situation at a time when individual
freedom of conscience was again at risk in the Dutch Republic.
Apart from its political connotations, the depiction likely contains an erudite reference
to the legendary painting of the same subject from antiquity by the Greek painterTimanthes.[7] Various classical and early modern sources praise Timanthes’s lost
masterpiece as a sublime portrayal of powerful emotional reactions, a skill at which ahistory painter should excel. Drawing on such texts, Karel van Mander (1584–1606)

Fig 9. Jan Steen, Dissolute
Household, “In Luxury Beware,”1663, oil on canvas, 105 x 145 cm,
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna,
inv. no. 178, © Bridgeman Images.

wrote that in his painting Timanthes expressed Agamemnon’s grief by having him
cover his face to avoid seeing his child’s cruel death.[8] In Steen’s work, Agamemnon
hides his shaded face behind his hand while looking downward rather than at his
daughter at the altar, ignoring the priest bending toward him. Yet the father’s grief is
not central in Steen’s portrayal of the story. Instead, the artist gave the subject his own
twist by rendering it as a comical farce around the story’s amorous subplot:
Agamemnon had lured Iphigenia to Aulis, where the Greek fleet was awaiting afavorable wind to sail, on the pretext that she would marry Achilles.
Steen depicted the moment when the ruse is revealed—at the left, we see the weeping
Cupid (not mentioned in any source) walking away holding his bow and a broken lovearrow, while being pursued by an old woman whose caricatural appearance embodies
the type of comic matchmaker that Steen also depicted in numerous genre scenes.[9]Iphigenia is garbed as a bride in a white gown of silver cloth,[10] a garland of flowers in

Fig 10. Lucas van Leyden, David
Playing the Harp before Saul, ca.
1508, engraving, 252 x 182 mm,
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inv. no.
RP-P-OB-1601.

her hair. The young man looking on behind Agamemnon is most likely the duped
groom Achilles; with his oversized helmet and fashionable pointy moustache, he, too,resembles a comic character. In this way, Steen lent the dramatic story an overtly
humorous twist, an approach that the painting’s owner Van Heemskerk—a theater
lover—surely appreciated.
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The fact that Steen deployed humor in this serious, deeply tragic story about theinnocent princess was unprecedented, and for many—including the English painter andart critic Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792)—baffling. The contrast here between theserious subject and the “burlesque” execution (to quote Reynolds) is greater than in

Fig 11. Pieter Lastman, Paulus andBarnabas in Lystra, 1617, oil on
panel, 76 x 115 cm,
Rembrandthuis, Amsterdam (onloan from the Amsterdam
Museum), inv. no. SA 31443.

most of Steen’s other history paintings,[11] perhaps equaled only by his Wrath of
Ahasuerus, now in Birmingham (fig 3). In Steen’s depiction of the fiercely
gesticulating Persian king’s angry outburst at Esther’s banquet, painted with distinctive
theatricality, the highlight of the violence is the peacock pie on the table, which almost
seems to tumble out of the painting.
A comely young woman often plays a key role in Steen’s histories, as they also do inmany of his genre scenes. While Iphigenia is an innocent girl and the Jewish heroine
Esther the epitome of virtue, in the artist’s other works the female leads are not all sovirtuous and outwit their male opponents. For example, in another history painting in

Fig 12. Jacques Callot, Dwarf withTwo Poniards, 1616–21, etchingand engraving, 62 x 85 mm,
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no.
RP-P-OB-21.024.

The Leiden Collection (fig 6), the beautiful and cunning Egyptian queen Cleopatra had
her lover, the Roman army commander Mark Antony, completely in her thrall. Theirwager over who could stage the most lavish banquet, so brilliantly won by Cleopatra, islegendary: she had one of her precious pearl earrings dissolved in vinegar and thendrank the concoction. As far as is known, Steen depicted this story from Romanhistory, taken from Pliny’s Naturalis Historia (translated into Dutch in 1662), fourtimes, in each case with Cleopatra as the radiant center of the scene.[12] The story
afforded him the opportunity of unleashing his imagination on a banquet scene set in
antiquity, with a motley crowd of figures.
The scene in the Leiden Collection version of the subject is situated in a grand gallery,a setting whose theatrical character is reinforced by the red drape raised above theFig 13. Jan Steen, Moses andPharaoh’s Crown, ca. 1670, oil oncanvas, 78 x 79 cm, Mauritshuis,
The Hague (acquired with thesupport of the BankGiro Lottery),inv. no. 1167.

banqueting table, a motif Steen often included in his histories.[13] We see Cleopatra
taunting her lover by dangling her second earring, which she also threatens to sacrifice,just out of his reach. From behind the table, Mark Antony vainly leans toward her tointervene. His martial attire, with its quasi-Roman helmet (reminiscent of that of
Achilles), makes his powerlessness in the face of Cleopatra even more ludicrous. Manyof the figures in this painting belong to Steen’s familiar comic repertoire, such as thedwarf with a jester’s cap, restrained by a laughing child (also seen, for example, in The
Mocking of Samson (fig 7)).[14] Two of the figures gaze out directly at the viewer, as isoften the case in Steen’s history paintings: the fat bald man behind Cleopatra, gesturingwith his index finger, and the man at the table on the right, picking his teeth with aknife.[15] Jacob Cats’s Trouringh (1637), a widely read didactic poem about marriage,
was probably an important source for Steen. In it, the amorous couple’s wager isdiscussed at length, with Mark Antony being portrayed as the epitome of the soldier
who falls prey to feminine wiles.[16] This theme plays a role in various history paintings
by Steen—such as his depiction of the treacherous Delilah, who brings about the© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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downfall of the powerful Samson (fig 8) —but also sometimes in his genre scenes.[17]Even when depicting stories with no female characters, Steen still liked to paint a
seductive woman in full view to serve as an eye catcher in his picture. This is the casein Lazarus and the Rich Man or “In Luxury Beware” (fig 4), where all attention iscentered on the woman with grape vines encircling her head, seated on a stone wall in
the foreground, who strums her cittern all the while looking out at us over her
shoulder.[18] Together with the man behind her, she forms the center of the festive
scene where wine flows freely. The man with a white apron, a jug in the crook of hisarm, a raised wine glass, and a white dishcloth over his shoulder is the type ofinnkeeper who happily supplies everyone with drinks. He is a comic character,underlined by the cock feathers on his red cap,[19] just like the colorful procession of
merry musicians and children.
The actual subject of this festive scene—the biblical parable of the beggar Lazarus andthe Rich Man (Luke 16:19–31)—unfolds in the right background. Lazarus, dressed inrags, sits on the ground before a table, vainly hoping for some scraps of the sumptuous
meal, as a servant refills the turbaned rich man’s glass. Only a dog comes to the beggar
and licks his sores, as the Bible tells us. Steen compounded Lazarus’s misery byincluding a woman who mocks him by shaking a table cloth with crossed arms,
intimating that she would rather give the morsels to a begging Löwchen (little lion
dog).[20] It is clear that Lazarus, not the rich man, will ultimately be blessed in heaven, amoralizing message underlined in this painting by the inscription on the stone wall
below the cittern player: In weelde siet toe (In luxury beware).
Steen had previously included the same proverb as a warning in his Dissolute
Household of 1663 (fig 9), now in Vienna, where an utter mess is the result of thewanton and licentious behavior of young and old while the lady of the house sleeps.[21]Hanging from the ceiling in this overcrowded image is a wicker basket filled with
objects that reference the disastrous consequences of the shameless debaucherydepicted with such biting humor. In the basket, among other things, are a beggar’s
crutch and a leper’s clapper, called a lazarusklep (Lazarus’s clapper) in Dutch, referringto the downfall and misery that await these sinners in the future. The moralizing
message in this genre scene is the same as in Lazarus and the Rich Man. The fact that
Steen extended the motif of the Lazarus’s clapper from his dissolute household into afull-fledged history painting with the biblical parable illustrates how closely genre andhistory scenes are interwoven in his work.[22] Various comic types such as thematchmaker, the innkeeper, and the deceived lover appear in both genre and history
scenes. These two parts of the oeuvre of the comic figure painter and storyteller can beunderstood as offshoots of the same tree. That Steen worked in these genres
simultaneously, using the same pictorial idiom, was exceptional in the seventeenth© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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century.

Steen’s Literary and Pictorial Sources
From his earliest biographers, the humor that plays such an important role in Steen’s
work earned him the reputation of libertine and joker himself, as if his farcicalpaintings were a reflection of his own lifestyle.[23] Yet attention was also paid toanother, more serious side of the artist. Jacob Campo Weyerman wrote in 1729: “Buthowever loose Jan Steen’s behavior, he was not at all lax in his critical knowledge or in
his practice of the art of painting, while he . . . could discuss and reason so profoundly
about all the characteristics of that art that it was a joy to witness his reflective
discourses.”[24] Basing his account on information from the Leiden painter Carel deMoor (1655–1738), who could have known Steen as a young man, Weyerman thus
sketched a picture of an artist intensively engaged with the theory and practice of his
profession. It is particularly interesting that Weyerman explicitly referred to Steen’s
history paintings, noting “that he sometimes had highly uncommon and lofty thoughts,
in order to render his histories in a wondrous way . . . exerting all the power of hissoul.”[25]The son of a brewer, Jan Steen grew up in a Catholic upper-middle-class milieu andwas well educated at the Latin School in Leiden. His family had connections in theworlds of art and science. His aunt Marijtje Steen (a sister of his father) was married
to Joost Lievens de Rechte (ca. 1606–49), brother of the painter Jan Lievens(1607–74), who had a bookshop on the Rapenburg in Leiden until his death in 1649.
As a poetry lover, his uncle Dirck Steen (a brother of his father), an oil miller byprofession, had a large library, which he bequeathed to his brothers and sisters when hedied in 1633. Jan Steen had other uncles who had studied medicine, and he alsocounted a pharmacist, instrument maker, and musician among them.[26] Thanks to thiscultivated background, Steen must have been exposed to literary and art historicalsources from an early age. In part through his family’s network, he probably had accessto (print) collections early on, allowing him to study the work of his artistic
predecessors. Such a privileged background not only was an asset in Steen’s intellectualand artistic development, but would also have given him entrée later in life to thecircles of wealthy collectors such as Willem van Heemskerck.
Jan Steen mined his sources with remarkable ingenuity, always looking for ways tobroaden his repertoire and add to his trove of motifs. He often appears to have closely
studied the narrative texts on which his history paintings were based, searching for
unusual elements not yet treated by other artists. Sacrifice of Iphigenia, for example, isa painting with evident political content that was highly topical at the time. Steennevertheless managed to give this serious subject a comic twist by foregrounding the© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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subplot with the aspiring bridegroom Achilles—something no artist had done before
him. Although Steen could have become familiar with Erasmus’s Latin translation ofEuripides’s play at the Latin School, he based his rendering primarily on Samuel
Coster’s Iphigenia-treurspel, as discussed above.[27] Steen was undoubtedly familiar withthe story of Cleopatra’s profligacy from Jacob Cats’s impassioned description of theextravagant wager in his poem Trou-ringh; however, he could equally have been able toread it in the 1662 Dutch translation of Pliny’s Naturalis Historia.[28] Steen sometimes
ingeniously bent the stories he depicted to his will, always looking for opportunities to
depict a scene of mockery. For example, in Steen’s rendering of the biblical parable ofLazarus and the rich man, the poor beggar not only gets nothing to eat, but is also
scoffed at by the rich man’s servant—a detail that is not mentioned in the biblical text.
In addition to his literary sources, Steen also delved extensively into the work of his
artistic predecessors and contemporaries, presumably mainly through reproductive
prints. Not only for his history pieces, but also for his genre scenes, he derived motifs
from masters such as Lucas van Leyden (1494–1533), Maarten van Heemskerck(1498–1574), Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1525/30–69), Jacob Jordaens (1593–1678),
and Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–69), as well as great Italian artists such as Raphael(1483–1520), Jacopo Bassano (1510–92), Paolo Veronese (1528–88), and the German
Adam Elsheimer (1578–1610).[29] For Sacrifice of Iphigenia, Steen adopted various
visual elements from a print of the same subject, the design of which was attributed toMichelangelo (1475–1564).[30] With such a quotation, Steen is apprising theknowledgeable viewer that he is familiar with important Italian examples. The figureof Agamemnon on his throne is taken from Lucas van Leyden’s print of David Playing
the Harp before Saul (fig 10), which features King Saul in a pose resembling that ofAgamemnon slumped over on his throne trying to contain his rage.[31] For Steen, thework of Lucas van Leyden, his legendary predecessor from Leiden, was an importantbenchmark and source of inspiration. With his own history paintings, Steen may havewanted to follow in his illustrious footsteps. Sometimes the motif is no more than aquotation—as in Sacrifice of Iphigenia—but his monumental masterpiece The Worshipof the Golden Calf (fig 2), also dating from the 1670s, can be considered as paying
particular homage to the great Lucas, an emulation of a famous triptych of the same
subject by the latter.[32]In addition, Steen regularly referred to the work of Pieter Lastman (1583–1633), theAmsterdam history painter who had painted so many stories for the first time.[33] For
Sacrifice of Iphigenia, for example, Steen was inspired by Lastman’s scenes of pagan
feasts with people crowding around altars with burning branches and flowers scatteredon the ground (fig 11). The artistic sources from which Steen drew were broad andvaried. A popular series of prints with grotesque figures by the Frenchman Jacques
Callot (1592–1635) (fig 12) probably inspired several caricatural dwarfs who feature© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Jan Steen’s Histories
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with other pranksters in his history paintings, such as in the Banquet of Anthony andCleopatra (fig 6). Moreover, he studied the work of his contemporaries. For example,
the woman playing the cittern in Lazarus and the Rich Man is based on a figure by the
Haarlem artist Cornelis Bega (1632–64), six years Steen’s junior.[34]This skillful borrowing from other artists, incidentally, was a highly recommended
practice in the seventeenth century. With his famous aphorism Wel ghecoockte rapen isgoe pottage (well-cooked turnips make a good soup), Karel van Mander encouraged hisreaders to “pick and choose” artistic elements to their hearts’ content (the Dutch word
for turnips, rapen, also means to collect or gather), with the aim to incorporate these
quotations into their own coherent creation.[35] With apparent ease, Steen playfully
introduced all sorts of visual quotations into his paintings, which seem primarily
intended to showcase his broad art historical knowledge and expertise. As far as
content was concerned, he drew primarily on literary sources, using them at will. The
frequency with which he depicted stories that were often also the subject of plays is
striking.

Steen and Theater
Because of this fact, combined with the theatricality of many of his depictions, it hasoften been assumed that Steen’s paintings were informed by contemporary stagepractice.[36] Yet, with the exception of two renderings of a scene from a play by
Gerbrand Bredero (1585–1618), Steen’s paintings do not feature specific scenes fromcontemporary plays or scripts.[37] Whereas in a play, like Coster’s Iphigenia-Treurspel,the story unfolds in time, in a succession of scenes with characters coming and going,in a painting, all of the elements of an emotionally charged story are condensed into asingle tableau.[38] Steen’s paintings therefore reflect a more general form of inspirationthat he gained from various forms of drama. Dutch art theorists, among them Karelvan Mander and Arnold Houbraken, encouraged young painters to study actors to learn
how to render emotions by means of facial expressions and body language.[39] In afootnote to his biography of Jan Steen published in 1721, Houbraken elaborated on thetheater practices of antiquity, when “mimes and pantomines” were performed between
the acts. The actors expressed “al het geen men hartstogt noemen kan” (all that one cancall passion) by means of “buigingen van ‘t Lyf, grimmassen, vreemde sprongen”(contortions of the body, grimaces, strange jumps). Interestingly, Houbraken advised
aspiring painters to look closely not only at actors but also at paintings by Steen, who
succeeded as none other in conveying the “essential traits” of his characters.[40] As foractors in plays, it was crucial for history painters to convey convincingly the emotionsof the characters in a story in order to get its message across.
The use of colorful costumes is an important parallel between Steen’s history paintings© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Jan Steen’s Histories
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and contemporary stage performances. Steen lavished particular attention on clothingin his history paintings, which include a multitude of exotic, old-fashioned, or antiqueelements.[41] In these works, as on stage, the costumes of the personages are integral tothe portrayal of narrative. This applies equally to Steen’s history paintings that do notharken back to a specific play, such as Banquet of Anthony and Cleopatra,[42] in which
the types of costumes resemble those used, for instance, at the Amsterdam
Schouwburg.[43] They range from quasi-Roman military tunics, such as that worn byMark Antony, to all manner of old-fashioned attire that could be used to place thecharacters in a different era. As noted previously, the motif of the red curtain tiedabove the protagonists is also a theatrical device that Steen frequently included in his
history paintings as a means, as it were, of enlarging the action and placing it outside its
own time and place.
Finally, not only in his history paintings but also in his genre scenes, Steen often
introduced characters who act as a kind of intermediary, addressing the viewer directlywith their gaze and gestures. Such figures are reminiscent of commentators on stage
who took the audience aside, in a manner of speaking, to remark on what was being
presented: these could be, for example, speakers in prologues or epilogues or
allegorical figures.[44] In rederijker plays, so-called sinnekens (allegorical characters)came on stage to portray the vices and mock the weaknesses of the protagonists.[45] In
Banquet of Anthony and Cleopatra, the bald servant with a raised index finger looking
out at us from the right behind Cleopatra plays a less-pronounced yet similar role.
Steen could have been exposed to the theatrical practice of his time in many different
ways. In the seventeenth century, only Amsterdam had a theater where professional
actors staged their shows; however, there were also traveling actors who, for example,
performed at annual fairs.[46] Steen may, of course, have read scripts as well, either
alone or in reading societies, which were prevalent at the time.[47] A key role in theprofessionalization of the theater was played by the rederijkers, societies of literaryamateurs who met for poetry readings, theater performances and tableaux vivants.
Steen depicted rederijkers declaiming and, invariably, hitting the bottle in various genre
scenes.[48] The multifaceted theatrical practice of Steen’s time must have been an
inexhaustible source of inspiration for him, especially for his explicitly theatricalhistories.

The Critical Fortune of Steen’s Histories
Steen’s popularity as one of the most important seventeenth-century Dutch painters has
been based almost exclusively on his genre scenes (including a limited number of
portraits in the guise of genre scenes). His history paintings have long been anunderappreciated, and therefore less well-known part of his oeuvre.[49] Throughout the© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Jan Steen’s Histories
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centuries, these works often elicited incomprehension and discomfort, reactions
expressed by various authors from the eighteenth century to the present day.
Generations of art critics have struggled with Steen’s undignified presentation ofserious subjects, his humor deemed as inappropriate for these historical themes. In thethird quarter of the seventeenth century, when Steen embarked on his career as ahistory painter, a penchant for dignity and monumentality came to dominate theportrayal of histories. Steen generally did not adhere to contemporaneous art theory’s
rules for portraying the “gedenckwaerdichste Historiën” (most memorable histories), the“hoogsten en voornaemsten trap in de Schilderkonst” (highest and most distinguishedrung in the art of painting), as Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627–78) put it in 1678.[50]These rules prescribed that the story be rendered in a dignified and plausible manner,with the characters expressing the relevant emotions through facial expressions,
gestures and poses, to convey the message clearly. Steen went against the grain bycreating an incomparable oeuvre of highly original history paintings, which occupy aunique position within the range of Dutch history paintings because of their emphasison anecdote and humor.[51]In the absence of contemporary written sources, it is somewhat difficult to ascertain
how Steen’s history paintings were received in his own time. Nevertheless, hisincreased production of relatively large history paintings from the middle of the 1660s
indicates that, prevailing art-theoretical notions notwithstanding, a demand existed forthem among patrons like Willem van Heemskerck. Judging from prices listed in earlyeighteenth-century sales catalogues, Steen’s history scenes were even among his mostexpensive works. Tastes, however, would change in the following centuries when aclassicizing style of history painting became prevalent and the market value of theseworks decreased.[52] The best-known representative of the later lack of appreciation is
Joshua Reynolds, who described Sacrifice of Iphigenia as the ultimate example of how,in his opinion, the painter had gone off the rails on this serious subject and become“perfectly ridiculous.”[53]More recently, the critical fortune of Steen’s histories has been revived, particularly in
the United States, where since the Second World War, museums in Raleigh, Cleveland,
San Francisco, and Los Angeles have purchased important biblical and mythologicalworks by the master.[54] In recent decades, collectors have given other history paintings
by Steen to museums in cities such as Phoenix, Memphis, and in Louisville,
Kentucky.[55] Between 2006 and 2008, The Leiden Collection acquired the three
impressive histories by Steen discussed in this essay. Finally, in 2014, Steen’s Ascagnes
and Lucelle (The Music Lesson), which had been donated to the Corcoran Museum of
Art in 1926, was transferred to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.[56]Exhibitions have also emphasized Steen’s history paintings. In 1996, a substantial group© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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of ten history paintings was included in the monographic exhibition Jan Steen, Painterand Storyteller at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Rijksmuseum in
Amsterdam.[57] More than two decades later, in 2017–18, the Barber Institute of Fine
Arts in Birmingham, England, organized a focused exhibition of Steen’s Old Testamentscenes,[58] highlighting the Institute’s Wrath of Ahasuerus, which had been an insightfulacquisition in 1939. At the Mauritshuis, despite the very rich holdings of no less thanfourteen Steen paintings, there was no history painting by Steen until 2011—due, nodoubt, to the fact that these works were long undervalued, especially in European
museums. In 2011, this gap in the Mauritshuis’s collection was finally filled by thepurchase of Steen’s Moses and Pharaoh’s Crown (fig 13), a depiction of an apocryphal
story from the prophet’s childhood.[59] In 2018, to celebrate this much-needed
acquisition, the Mauritshuis organized the exhibition Jan Steen’s Histories, which
offered the first overview of this part of his oeuvre.[60] Each of these exhibitions has
been important for the reappraisal of Steen’s history paintings, demonstrating not only
the rich inventiveness of his narrative approach to biblical and mythological stories,
but also his ability to captivate and enchant the viewer in new and unexpected ways.

- Ariane van Suchtelen, 2021

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Endnotes
1. For Jan Steen as a history painter, see Baruch Kirschenbaum, The Religious and Historical Paintings of
Jan Steen (New York, 1977); Lyckle de Vries, “Jan Steen zwischen Genre- und Historienmalerei,” in
Niederdeustche Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte 22 (1983): 113–28; Mariët Westermann, The Amusements of
Jan Steen—Comic Painting in the Seventeenth Century (Zwolle, 1997), 276–312; Robert Wenley et al.,eds., Pride and Persecution—Jan Steen’s Old Testament Scenes (Exh. cat. Birmingham, Barber Institute ofFine Arts) (Birmingham, 2017–18); Rosalie van Gulick, “Jan Steen’s History Paintings and Dutch Art
Theory: Comments and Corrections by Gerard de Lairesse,” Simiolus 39 (2017): 386–97; Ariane van
Suchtelen, ed., Jan Steen’s Histories (Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis) (The Hague, 2018), with essays
by Ariane van Suchtelen, Wouter Th. Kloek and Mariët Westermann.
2. He was the first to paint the mockery of the vanquished Samson by the Philistines, an Old Testament
subject that had never been depicted, even in prints. Ariane van Suchtelen, ed., Jan Steen’s Histories(Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis) (The Hague, 2018), no. 6, fig. 6a; Karel Braun, Alle tot nu toe
bekende schilderijen van Jan Steen (Rotterdam, 1980), nos. 298 and 365.
3. In his monograph, Karel Braun arrives at 376 paintings, but his B category (“wrongly attributed to
Steen”) includes many autograph works. See Karel Braun, Alle tot nu toe bekende schilderijen van Jan
Steen (Rotterdam, 1980).
4. Approximately ten history paintings by Steen have similar formats, which suggests that they werecommissioned, but it is very rare that the name of the original owner can be traced. See Ariane van
Suchtelen, “A Storyteller of Genius: Jan Steen and the Art of History Painting,” in Ariane van
Suchtelen, ed., Jan Steen’s Histories (Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis) (The Hague, 2018), 22.
5. The identity of the woman with folded hands leaning out of a window opposite Diana is not clear. She
might represent Helen, the indirect cause of all of these troubles. Samuel Coster’s 1617 play Iphigeniatreurspel, which may have served as a source for Steen, contains no clues as to who she might be.
Further discussion follows below.
6. See the entry Sacrifice of Iphigenia by Wouter Th. Kloek, in this catalogue.
7. Mariët Westermann, The Amusements of Jan Steen—Comic Painting in the Seventeenth Century (Zwolle,
1997), 303.
8. Compare Mieke B. Smits-Veldt, “Bredero en Timanthes,” Spektator 14 (1984–85): 288–90; Karel van
Mander, Het Schilder-boeck, Den Grondt der Edel vry Schilder-const (Haarlem, 1604), folio 26r. Van
Mander used Valerius Maximus as his source; see Eric Jan Sluijter, De ‘heydensche fabulen’ in deschilderkunst van de Gouden Eeuw (Leiden, 2000), 245n87. For Timanthes, see William Smith, ed., A
Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, Timanthes, accessed 15 August 2021,
www.perseus.tufts.edu. Other art theorists outside of the Netherlands, such as Leon Battista Alberti, also
discussed this tale.
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9. Wouter Th. Kloek, “Jan Steen, His Repertoire of Motifs and History Painting,” in Ariane van Suchtelen,ed., Jan Steen’s Histories (Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis) (The Hague, 2018), 51.
10. Since the Middle Ages, aristocratic brides had been wed in silver cloth (a white fabric interwoven withsilver thread), the color white symbolizing purity and humility. Compare Ariane van Suchtelen, ed., Jan
Steen’s Histories (Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis) (The Hague, 2018), 179n17, nos. 11, 12.
11. Sir Joshua Reynolds, Discourses on Art, ed. Robert R. Wark (New Haven, 1975), 236.
12. Karel Braun, Alle tot nu toe bekende schilderijen van Jan Steen (Rotterdam, 1980), nos. 283, 287, 306,
364. Also see the entry Banquet of Anthony and Cleopatra by Wouter Th. Kloek, in this catalogue;
Yvonne Bleyerveld in Ariane van Suchtelen, ed., Jan Steen’s Histories (Exh. cat. The Hague,
Mauritshuis) (The Hague, 2018), no. 18.
13. Compare Ariane van Suchtelen, ed., Jan Steen’s Histories (Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis) (The
Hague, 2018), nos. 3, 5–7, 9–12, 14, 18, 21.
14. In The Mocking of Samson (see Ariane van Suchtelen, ed., Jan Steen’s Histories [Exh. cat. The Hague,
Mauritshuis] [The Hague, 2018], no. 6), two laughing children restrain the vanquished warrior Samson
while, on the right, a grinning dwarf threatens him with a halberd. In various scenes, figures wearing
jester’s hats emphasize the ridiculousness of the situation depicted, sometimes in a private aside with theviewer (compare Van Suchtelen, Jan Steen’s Histories, no. 9).
15. In Steen’s paintings, the innkeeper (or other servant) carries a white tea towel over his shoulder.
16. For the assumption that Jacob Cats was the source for Jan Steen, see Cornelis W. de Groot, Jan
Steen—Beeld en woord (Utrecht–Nijmegen), 31–32; Baruch Kirschenbaum, The Religious and Historical
Paintings of Jan Steen (New York, 1977), 86, 145. See also the entry Banquet of Anthony and Cleopatra
by Wouter Th. Kloek, in this catalogue; Yvonne Bleyerveld in Ariane van Suchtelen, ed., Jan Steen’s
Histories (Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis) (The Hague, 2018), 157. The wager does not occur in twocontemporary plays by Willem van Nieuwelandt (1624) and Dieverina van Kouwenhoven (1669); see
Yvonne Bleyerveld, entry in Jan Steen’s Histories, ed. Ariane van Suchtelen (Exh. cat. The Hague,
Mauritshuis) (The Hague, 2018), 183n10.
17. See, for example, Jan Steen, Samson and Delilah (Ariane van Suchtelen, ed., Jan Steen’s Histories [Exh.
cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis] [The Hague, 2018], no. 5) and his Card Players (H. Perry Chapman,
Wouter Th. Kloek, and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Jan Steen, Painter and Storyteller, ed. Guido Jansen[Exh. cat. Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum] [New Haven, 1996],
no. 14).
18. Wouter Kloek interprets the scene as an example of the ironic eulogy as found in Erasmus’s In Praise of
Folly, visually worked out in the sixteenth century by Jan van Hemessen and Pieter Aertsen, among
others. See the entry Lazarus and the Rich Man or “In Luxury Beware” by Wouter Th. Kloek, in thiscatalogue; and Wouter Th. Kloek, “Jan Steen, His Repertoire of Motifs and History Painting,” in Jan
Steen’s Histories, ed. Ariane van Suchtelen (Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis) (The Hague, 2018),
48–49. Given the fact that Steen does not depict a still life in the foreground (the ironic eulogy of© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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subordinate passages as, for example, with Aertsen; compare Reindert Falkenburg, “‘Alter Einoutus’: On
the Nature and Origin of Pieter Aertsen’s Still Life Conception,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 40[1989]: 56–59), this interpretation does not hold water; there is no paradoxical encomium of the figuresin the foreground.
19. The red cap (often with slashes in the fabric) is worn by numerous comic characters in paintings by
Steen. For an example with cock feathers, compare Dancing Couple in the National Gallery of Art,
Washington, D.C. (www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.1220.html, accessed 21 March 2021).
20. In an earlier rendition of the parable dating from 1667, Steen depicted the mocking of Lazarus evenmore poignantly by having a boy urinate into a drinking jug from which the poor beggar could havequenched his thirst. Karel Braun, Alle tot nu toe bekende schilderijen van Jan Steen (Rotterdam, 1980),
no. 282; see also Wouter Th. Kloek, “Jan Steen, His Repertoire of Motifs and History Painting,” in Jan
Steen’s Histories, ed. Ariane van Suchtelen (Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis) (The Hague, 2018),
48–49.
21. H. Perry Chapman, Wouter Th. Kloek, and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Jan Steen, Painter and Storyteller,
ed. Guido Jansen (Exh. cat. Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum)(New Haven, 1996), no. 21.
22. Baruch Kirschenbaum, The Religious and Historical Paintings of Jan Steen (New York, 1977), 91–103;
Lyckle de Vries, “Jan Steen zwischen Genre- und Historienmalerei,” Niederdeustche Beiträge zur
Kunstgeschichte 22 (1983): 113–28; Lyckle de Vries, “Steen’s Artistic Evolution in the Context of Dutch
Painting,” in Jan Steen, Painter and Storyteller, H. Perry Chapman, Wouter Th. Kloek, and Arthur K.
Wheelock Jr., ed. Guido Jansen (Exh. cat. Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art; Amsterdam,
Rijksmuseum) (New Haven, 1996), 78–79; Ariane van Suchtelen, “A Storyteller of Genius: Jan Steenand the Art of History Painting,” in Jan Steen’s Histories, ed. Ariane van Suchtelen (Exh. cat. The Hague,
Mauritshuis) (The Hague, 2018), 27–28.
23. Lyckle de Vries, “Achttiende- en negentiende-eeuwse auteurs over Jan Steen,” Oud Holland 97 (1973):
227–39; Mariët Westermann, The Amusements of Jan Steen—Comic Painting in the Seventeenth Century(Zwolle, 1997), 16–45; Mariët Westermann, “Steen’s Great History Pageant,” in Jan Steen’s Histories, ed.
Ariane van Suchtelen (Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis) (The Hague, 2018), 55–72.
24. “Hoe los dat dien Jan Steen ook was in zijn gedrag, echter zo min los in de Beschouwelijke kennis, als inde Praktijk van de Schilderkonst, dewijl hy . . . zo weezendlijk redeneerde over alle de Eygenschappen
van die konst, dat het een lust was zijn vertoogen by te woonen.” Jacob Campo Weyerman, De
levensbeschyvingen der Nederlandsche konst-schilders en konst-schilderessen, met een uytbreyding over deschilder-konst der ouden (The Hague, 1729), 2: 364.
25. “Dat hy somtijds zeer ongemeene en verheevene gedachten had, om zijne Historien uyt te drukken op
een wonderlyke wijze . . . met eene inspanning van alle zielskrachten.” Jacob Campo Weyerman, De
levensbeschyvingen der Nederlandsche konst-schilders en konst-schilderessen, met een uytbreyding over deschilder-konst der ouden (The Hague, 1729), 2: 364.
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26. Marten Jan Bok, “The Artist’s Life,” in Jan Steen, Painter and Storyteller, H. Perry Chapman, WouterTh. Kloek, and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., ed. Guido Jansen (Exh. cat. Washington, D.C., National Galleryof Art; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) (New Haven, 1996), 28.
27. Vondel’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses was also published in 1671, the same year Steen painted
the picture in The Leiden Collection. However, the sacrifice of Iphigenia during the prelude to the
Trojan War is only briefly described in Ovid’s text (book 12), without any reference to Achilles. See theentry Sacrifice of Iphigenia by Wouter Th. Kloek, in this catalogue, n3.
28. The banquet in question does not occur in two contemporary plays about Cleopatra and Mark Antony;see Yvonne Bleyerveld, entry in Jan Steen’s Histories, ed. Ariane van Suchtelen (Exh. cat. The Hague,
Mauritshuis) (The Hague, 2018), 183n10, no. 18.
29. For Jan Steen’s adoption of motifs, see the essays and catalogue entries in Ariane van Suchtelen, ed., Jan
Steen’s Histories (Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis) (The Hague, 2018).
30. Wouter Th. Kloek, Sacrifice of Iphigenia, in this catalogue, fig. 3.
31. Steen also used this motif from Lucas van Leyden’s print for his Moses and Pharaoh’s Crown in the
Mauritshuis (fig. 13); see Ariane van Suchtelen, ed., Jan Steen’s Histories (Exh. cat. The Hague,
Mauritshuis) (The Hague, 2018), no. 3, fig. 3a.
32. Ariane van Suchtelen, ed., Jan Steen’s Histories (Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis) (The Hague, 2018),
no. 4.
33. See Lara Yeager-Crasselt, “Pieter Lastman’s David and Uriah: Storytelling and the Passions,” in thiscatalogue.
34. Wouter Th. Kloek, Lazarus and the Rich Man or “In Luxury Beware,” in this catalogue, fig. 2.
35. Karel van Mander, Het Schilder-boeck, Den Grondt der Edel vry Schilder-const (Haarlem 1604), folio 5r;
compare with, among others, Ben Broos, Intimacies and Intrigues—History Painting in the
Mauritshuis (The Hague, 1993), 16–18.
36. See Oskar Fischel, “Art and the Theatre—II,” Burlington Magazine 66 (1935): 54–68; Johan B.F. vanGils, “Jan Steen en de rederijkers,” Oud Holland 52 (1935): 130–33; Johan B.F. van Gils, “Jan Steen inden schouwburg,” Op de hoogte 34 (1937): 92–93; Sturla J. Gudlaugsson, Ikonographische Studien überdie Holländische Malerei und das Theater des 17. Jahrhunderts (Würzburg, 1938), 16ff; Albert Heppner,“The Popular Theatre of the Rederijkers in the Work of Jan Steen and his Contemporaries,” Journal of
the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 3 (1939–40): 35–44; Cornelis W. de Groot, Jan Steen—beeld en
woord (Utrecht, 1952), 34–36; Wilhelm Martin, Jan Steen (Amsterdam, 1954), 18, 69–71; Baruch
Kirschenbaum, The Religious and Historical Paintings of Jan Steen (New York, 1977), 77–85; Lyckle deVries, review of Kirschenbaum 1977, Burlington Magazine 129 (1978): 99–100; Mariët Westermann,
The Amusements of Jan Steen—Comic Painting in the Seventeenth Century (Zwolle, 1997), 35–36;
Wouter Th. Kloek, entry Sacrifice of Iphigenia, in this catalogue; Nina Cahill, “Staging the Old
Testament—Jan Steen and the Theatre,” in Pride and Persecution—Jan Steen’s Old Testament Scenes, ed.
Robert Wenley et al. (Exh. cat. Birmingham, Barber Institute of Fine Arts) (Birmingham, 2017–18),© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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21–33; Ariane van Suchtelen, “A Storyteller of Genius: Jan Steen and the Art of History Painting,” inJan Steen’s Histories, ed. Ariane van Suchtelen (Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis) (The Hague, 2018),
26; Mariët Westermann, “Steen’s Great History Pageant,” in Jan Steen’s Histories, ed. Ariane van
Suchtelen (Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis) (The Hague, 2018), 67–68.
37. For these two depictions by Steen of a scene from Gerbrand Bredero’s play Over-gesette Lucelle (1616),
see Lea van der Vinde, entry in Jan Steen’s Histories, ed. Ariane van Suchtelen (Exh. cat. The Hague,
Mauritshuis) (The Hague, 2018), 166–69, no. 21.
38. As discussed above, the Leiden Collection’s Sacrifice of Iphigenia, for example, does not reflect any
specific scene from Coster’s play, even though the atmosphere of the painting, in which emotions run
high, is extremely dramatic and theatrical, just as in the play.
39. Compare Karel van Mander, Het Schilder-boeck, Den Grondt der Edel vry Schilder-const (Haarlem,1604), folio 23r; Samuel van Hoogstraten, Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst: anders dezichtbaere werelt (Dordrecht, 1678), 109; Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche
konstschilders en schilderessen (Amsterdam, 1721), 3: 16–17. Samuel van Hoogstraten advised aspiring
painters to practice depicting emotions in history paintings as an actor in front of the mirror; see Ernst
van de Wetering, “The Multiple Functions of Rembrandt’s Self Portraits,” in Rembrandt by Himself, ed.
Christopher White and Quentin Buvelot (Exh. cat. London, The National Gallery; The Hague,
Mauritshuis) (The Hague, 1999–2000), 21.
40. Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen (Amsterdam,
1721), 3: 16–17; Ariane van Suchtelen, ed., Jan Steen’s Histories (Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis)(The Hague, 2018), 178n1.
41. Steen may also have derived his costume models from other sources, aside from the stage, such as
prints. Compare Marieke de Winkel’s research into Rembrandt’s use of costumes; see Marieke deWinkel, “Rembrandt’s Clothes—Dress and Meaning in His Self-Portraits,” in A Corpus of Rembrandt
Paintings, vol. 4, The Self-Portraits, Ernst van de Wetering et al., with collaboration of Carin van Nes,
Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project (The Hague, 2005), 45–87.
42. See note 28.
43. Nina Cahill, “Staging the Old Testament—Jan Steen and the Theatre,” in Pride and Persecution—Jan
Steen’s Old Testament Scenes, ed. Robert Wenley et al. (Exh. cat. Birmingham, Barber Institute of Fine
Arts) (Birmingham, 2017–18), 28.
44. Mariët Westermann, The Amusements of Jan Steen—Comic Painting in the Seventeenth Century (Zwolle,
1997), 300–301. The use of such commentary figures was also recommended in theoretical publications
about the art of painting; see Westermann, The Amusements of Jan Steen, 112–15; and Ana Ebert,
Adriaen van Ostade und die komische Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 2014), 37–80.
45. Nina Cahill, “Staging the Old Testament—Jan Steen and the Theatre,” in Pride and Persecution—Jan
Steen’s Old Testament Scenes, ed. Robert Wenley et al. (Exh. cat. Birmingham, Barber Institute of Fine
Arts) (Birmingham, 2017–18), 31. Compare W.M.H. Hummelen, De sinnekens in het rederijkersdrama© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Jan Steen’s Histories
Page 18 of 19(Groningen, 1958).
46. See, for instance, Simon Koster, Van schout to schouwburg. 500 jaar toneel in Haarlem (Haarlem, 1970),
113–25.
47. See the entry Sacrifice of Iphigenia by Wouter Th. Kloek, in this catalogue, n14.
48. Compare H. Perry Chapman, Wouter Th. Kloek, and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Jan Steen, Painter andStoryteller, ed. Guido Jansen (Exh. cat. Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art; Amsterdam,
Rijksmuseum) (New Haven, 1996), no. 24; Ariane van Suchtelen, entry in Genre Paintings in the
Mauritshuis, Ariane van Suchtelen and Quentin Buvelot (The Hague, 2016), no. 48. It is not known
whether Steen was a member of a rhetoricians’ chamber.
49. Compare H. Perry Chapman, Wouter Th. Kloek, and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Jan Steen, Painter andStoryteller, ed. Guido Jansen (Exh. cat. Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art; Amsterdam,
Rijksmuseum) (New Haven, 1996), no. 24; Ariane van Suchtelen, entry in Genre Paintings in the
Mauritshuis, Ariane van Suchtelen and Quentin Buvelot (The Hague, 2016), no. 48. Ariane van
Suchtelen, “A Storyteller of Genius: Jan Steen and the Art of History Painting,” in Jan Steen’s Histories,
ed. Ariane van Suchtelen (Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis) (The Hague, 2018), 29.
50. Samuel van Hoogstraten, Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst: anders de zichtbaere
werelt (Dordrecht, 1678), 79.
51. In a sense, Steen’s history paintings evoke the spectacular plays by the Amsterdam playwright Jan Vos(ca. 1610–1667), which were still immensely popular in the 1660s and 1670s when Steen was at theheight of his activity as a history painter. His paintings may have appealed to the same taste forextravaganza and tragicomedy.
52. Mariët Westermann, The Amusements of Jan Steen—Comic Painting in the Seventeenth Century (Zwolle,
1997), 71–72; Ariane van Suchtelen, “A Storyteller of Genius: Jan Steen and the Art of History
Painting,” in Jan Steen’s Histories, ed. Ariane van Suchtelen (Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis) (The
Hague, 2018), 31n73.
53. Sir Joshua Reynolds, Discourses on Art, ed. Robert R. Wark (New Haven, 1975), 236.
54. Ariane van Suchtelen, ed., Jan Steen’s Histories (Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis) (The Hague, 2018),
nos. 4, 5, 7, 9 and 19.
55. Paintings have also been given to museums in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Jacksonville, Florida. Ariane
van Suchtelen, “A Storyteller of Genius: Jan Steen and the Art of History Painting,” in Ariane van
Suchtelen, ed., Jan Steen’s Histories (Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis) (The Hague, 2018), 31nn79–80.
56. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., “Ascagnes and Lucelle (The Music Lesson),” National Gallery of Art Online
Editions:

Dutch

Paintings

17th

Century,

December

9,

2019,

http://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.195366.html (accessed 21 March 2021).
57. H. Perry Chapman, Wouter Th. Kloek, and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Jan Steen, Painter and Storyteller,
ed. Guido Jansen (Exh. cat. Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum)© 2024 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Jan Steen’s Histories
Page 19 of 19(New Haven, 1996), nos. 11, 31, 32, 34, 36, 39, 43–45, 47.
58. Robert Wenley et al., eds., Pride and Persecution—Jan Steen’s Old Testament Scenes (Exh. cat.
Birmingham, Barber Institute of Fine Arts) (Birmingham, 2017–18).
59. Ariane van Suchtelen, ed., Jan Steen’s Histories (Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis) (The Hague, 2018),
no. 3.
60. Ariane van Suchtelen, ed., Jan Steen’s Histories (Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis) (The Hague, 2018).

© 2024 The Leiden Collection