© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Lazarus and the Rich Man or “In Luxury Beware”
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Lazarus and the Rich Man or “In
Luxury Beware”
Jan Steen(Leiden 1626 – 1679 Leiden)

ca. 1677
oil on canvas
80.3 x 64.8 cm
inscription and signature in dark paint, onstonework, lower center:“In weelde
ziet toe JSteen” (“JS” in ligature)
JS-106

How to cite
Kloek, Wouter. “Lazarus and the Rich Man or “In Luxury Beware”” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue,
2nd ed. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017–20. https://theleidencollection.com/artwork/lazarusand-the-rich-man-or-in-luxury-beware/ (archived May 2020).
A PDF of every version of this entry is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive ismanaged by a permanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrative
occurs.

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Lazarus and the Rich Man or “In Luxury Beware”
Page 3 of 11“In weelde siet toe” (In Luxury Beware), the proverb that inspired Jan Steen

Comparative Figures’s painting, is literally set in stone on the bench in the foreground. Sitting on
this bench is an enticing Bacchanalian reveler, who, with grape vines
encircling her head, strums her cittern while gazing out evocatively at theviewer, as though inviting him to take part in the merrymaking. The big
boozer behind her, wearing a red hat crowned with a cock’s feather,smilingly raises a glass of wine in one hand while clutching a jug close to hisside with his other. The festive music provided by the woman, the bagpiper
and the flute player could not have created a very harmonious sound, but

Fig 1. Jan Steen, “In Luxury
Beware”, 1663, canvas, 105 x 145
cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum,
Vienna, 791

one senses that the quality of the music was not their principle
concern.[1] Despite the woman’s come-hither look, the slashes on the large
man’s blue pants and on the bagpipe player’s sleeves are consistent with
sixteenth-century fashions, which reminds the viewer that the scene is nottaken from contemporary life, but is an allegorical depiction of the proverb. In
a similar fashion, the actions of the children—one of whom offers a morsel ofcake to a barking dog while another holds up a bunch of grapes—relatethematically to the proverb “Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus,” (Without
Ceres and Bacchus, Venus would freeze). The proverb means that lovecannot flourish without food and drink.
The key to understanding the full thematic implications of the painting,however, is not to be found in the foreground figures but on the terrace in theright background, where Steen depicted the parable of Lazarus and the Rich
Man (Luke 16:18–21). Here Steen has followed a narrative model used byartists in the circle of Pieter Aertsen (1508–75) and Joachim BeuckelaerFig 2. Cornelis Bega, Young
Woman Playing a Lute, 1662,
canvas, 35 x 32.1 cm,
Gemäldegalerie Staatliche
Museen, Berlin, inv. 871, © Foto:
Gemäldegalerie der Staatlichen
Museen zu Berlin – Preußischer
Kulturbesitz Fotograf/in: Jörg P.
Anders(1533–74). In paintings by these artists, the true meaning of a scene is only
revealed upon discovering the significance of seemingly subordinate
passages in the backgrounds of their paintings, a compositional structure
known as the paradoxical encomium, or ironic eulogy.[2] The origin of thisrhetorical trope lies in literature, and was extensively used by Desiderius
Erasmus in his Lof der zotheid (“In Praise of Folly”), published in 1511. Jan
Steen often drew inspiration from Erasmus and the works of Aertsen andBeuckelaer, but he seldom applied the principles of the paradoxical
encomium as thoroughly as he did in this painting.[3]In the background of Steen’s painting the rich man sits at a table in thecompany of a young woman and a young man, while a waiter pours him aglass of wine. Lazarus lies before the table with his right hand raised and hisleft hand holding a begging bowl while a greyhound licks his sores. A
maidservant, pointedly crossing her arms, feeds a white poodle standing on© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Lazarus and the Rich Man or “In Luxury Beware”
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its hind legs to beg for this gift.[4] The pains taken by the girl to train a dog are
in stark contrast to her unpitying attitude toward Lazarus. This motif relates tothe story’s moral lesson about caring for those less fortunate than oneself,
for after Lazarus died he went to heaven, whereas the rich man ended up in
hell. When the rich man saw Lazarus sitting in Abraham’s lap, he asked if
Lazarus could bring him a sip of water, but this request was refused. His
entreaty to send Lazarus to warn members of his family about theconsequences of their behavior was also refused.
In the seventeenth century, the story of Lazarus and the rich man wasconnected with the necessity of doing good works, as is seen in two group
portraits painted in 1624 by Werner van den Valckert (1585–1627), Regentsand Regentesses of the Leper House in Amsterdam. In his depiction of themaleregents[5]

Abraham’s lap.

Van

der

Valckert

portrayed

LazarussittinginThis painting also includes a depiction of one of the acts ofmercy: clothing the poor. The doctrine of doing good works held that it waspossible to improve one’s chances of entering heaven by performing gooddeeds. This theme was generally treated with extreme caution in theseventeenth-century Dutch Republic since, according to the doctrine ofpredestination to which the Calvinists adhered, it was impossible to bringabout any change whatsoever in God’s preordained plan. This issue wasclearly known to the regents of the Leper House, hence it is surprising thatVan den Valckert referred so overtly to the Lazarus story in this work.
Nevertheless Lazarus and lepers were at that time almost synonymous. For
Catholics like Jan Steen, however, the doctrine of good works remained
important, and it is probable that Steen painted Lazarus and the Rich Man for
a Catholic patron.
Lazarus and the Rich Man has a number of connections to other works by
Steen. For example, in a painting of a dissolute household, dated 1663,
Steen inscribed the proverb “In weelde siet toe” on a piece of slate at thelower right (fig 1). Instead of illustrating this proverb with a biblical subject, as
he did in the Leiden Collection painting, Steen here introduced a number of
pictorial motifs that allude to other proverbs warning about insatiable desires
stemming from excessive luxury, among them worldliness, avarice, gluttony,and lasciviousness.[6] In 1667 Steen portrayed the story of Lazarus and therich man in a lavish but not overcrowded scene.[7] The motif of the rich man
in the background of the painting appears in reverse in The Banquet of
Anthony and Cleopatra of 1667 in Göttingen.[8] The motif of the poodle
standing on its hind legs appears a number of times in Steen’s paintings, in,among others, a work in Nivaa and a painting in Cape Town.[9] The one quite© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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distinctive figure in this painting is the lady playing the cittern, which does nototherwise appear in Steen’s works. As Mary Ann Scott has rightly observed,
Steen derived this figure from Cornelis Bega’s (1631–64) Young Woman
Playing the Lute of 1662 in Berlin (fig 2).[10] Steen must have rememberedthat painting when he moved from Haarlem to Leiden.
The Leiden Collection painting is stylistically similar to other works from thelast years of Steen’s career, including Merry Company on a Terrace (TheMetropolitan Museum of Art in New York), Family of Jan Steen (The Museumof Fine Arts in Budapest), and Garden Party of the Paets Family, dated 1677,
and must date from the same period.[11]- Wouter Kloek, 2017

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Endnotes

1. In Steen’s Adoration of the Golden Calf in Raleigh (see 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.
47), the drum, triangle, and tambourine sound simultaneously, whereas the panpipe lies
abandoned.
2. On the paradoxical encomium, see Rosalie L. Colie, Pradoxia epidemica: The RenaissanceTradition of Paradox (Princeton, 1966); and Reindert Falkenburg, “‘Alter Einoutus’: Over deaard en herkomst van Pieter Aertsens stilleven-conceptie,” Nederlands KunsthistorischJaarboek 40 (1989): 41–66, esp. 56–59.
3. Having attended the Latin School, Jan Steen knew the work of Erasmus, whose textbooks
continued to be used in schools until well into the eighteenth century. Ironically,
Steen’s Village School, now in Edinburgh, shows the portrait of Erasmus lying on the groundin a corner of the painting; see 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), 232, no. 41.
Presumably Steen also knew the Adagia, Erasmus’s collection of proverbs. Even more sothan Adriaen van de Venne, his immediate precursor as a painter of proverbs, Steen musthave been influenced by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525–69), whose work was certainly
connected with Erasmus’s Adagia; see Walter Gibson, Figures of Speech: Picturing Proverbs
in Renaissance Netherlands (Berkeley, 2010), esp. 8–11.
4. In general the motif of the trained dog was used in the seventeenth century to indicate
inquisitiveness, or an eagerness to learn (“leer-sucht”). On this subject, see Jan Baptist
Bedaux, The Reality of Symbols: Studies in the Iconology of Netherlandish Art
1400–1800 (The Hague, 1990), 109–69.
5. On these two works by Van den Valckert, see Korthals Altes in Jonathan Bikker et al., Dutch
Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, 2 vols. (Amsterdam,
2007), 1: 370–71, nos. 282 and 283.
6. For the Vienna painting, see: 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.
7. In that painting the anecdotal prevails (a boy urinating in the jug intended for Lazarus, forinstance, and a girl coaxing a dog to stand on its hind legs, the latter motif not reallyappropriate to this context), yet its refined and detailed execution makes it a true masterpiece.
8. Karel Braun, Alle schilderijen van Jan Steen (Rotterdam, 1980), no. 283.
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9. Karel Braun, Alle schilderijen van Jan Steen (Rotterdam, 1980), nos. 161 and 260 (fig. inreverse). For the latter painting, see Hans Fransen, The Michaelis Collection: The Old Town
House, Cape Town; Catalogue of the Collection of Paintings and Drawings (Zwolle, 1996),
143–44, no. 63, color ill. XLII.
10. Mary Ann Scott, “Cornelis Bega (1631/2–1664) as Painter and Draughtsman” (PhD diss.
University of Maryland, 1984), 87–88. With regard to Steen’s familiarity with Bega’s figure
studies, see also 94–95. Bega often made counterproofs of his drawings. As stated by Scott(pp. 144 and 163, n. 42), based in part on information from Lyckle de Vries (unpublishedcorrespondence), the frequent occurrence of figures in reverse in the work of Jan Steen might
be connected with the frequent use of counterproofs by the Haarlem draughtsmen of thattime.
11. Karel Braun, Alle schilderijen van Jan Steen (Rotterdam, 1980), no. 1980, no. 373; 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. 49

Provenance
C. Hoogendijk, Amsterdam, by 1899 (his sale, Muller’s, Amsterdam, 14 May 1912, no. 76).[1][Goudstikker, The Hague, 1920, no. 108].
Onnes Collection, Nijenrode (his sale, Fredrik Muller, Amsterdam, 10 July 1923, no. 40 [6,500
guilders]).
Preyer Collection, The Hague, before 1934.
G. J. Willink Collection, Winterswijk, before 1934; [D. Katz, Dieren, 1934–37].
A. Bronkhorst Collection, The Hague, 1937.
[Schaeffer Galleries, New York, by 15 Sept 1937 ($9,000.); D. Katz, Dieren, by 21 May 1938;
Miedl/Goudstikker, Amsterdam, by 14 August 1940].
Adolf Hitler, by 17 October 1940, Linz, no. 1107; Collecting Point Munich, 7 July 1945, no.
4414.
[Restituted to Katz, 11 December 1947].
H. Wetzlar Collection, Amsterdam.
[Bourghouts, Utrecht].
(Sale, Paris, Galerie Charpentier, 6 June 1958, no. 40 [Julius Weitzner, London and New
York, by 1959]).
Bob Jones University Art Museum, Greenville, S.C., 1959 [acquired from Weitzner for© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Lazarus and the Rich Man or “In Luxury Beware”
Page 8 of 11$15,000].
John Koch (1902–78), New York, by 1963.[2]Saul P. Steinberg Collection, New York, until 2000 [Richard L. Feigen & Co., New York,2000].
Private collection, Barrington, Ill., until 2006 [Johnny van Haeften, London, 2006].
From whom acquired by the present owner.

Provenance Notes

1. Cornelis Hoogendijk was a remarkable collector both of Old Masters and of works bycontemporary artists, such as Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Vincent van Gogh.
His collection, including the modern works, was on loan to the Rijksmuseum until his death in
1911. After the museum was presented with quite a few Old Masters from his estate, all therest was put on sale. See Herbert Henkels, “Cézanne en Van Gogh in het Rijksmseum voor
moderne Kunst in Amsterdam: De collectie van Cornelis Hoogendijk (1866–1911),” Bulletin
van het Rijksmuseum 41 (1993): 155–295. The loan of Lazarus and the Rich Man to the
Rijksmuseum is mentioned on 217, its sale in 1921 on 246.
2. The following photographs in the National Gallery of Art Library Image Collections show John
Koch (1909–1978) with the artwork in his home in 1969: Photographs, M/C, Lida Moser
Archive — DLI 1103600072; Photographs, M/C, Lida Moser Archive — DLI 1103600074. ©
Lida Moser Archive, Department of Image Collections, National Gallery of Art Library,
Washington, DC. The Leiden Collection thanks Molli Kuenstner, Image Specialist for Northernand Central European Art, Department of Library Image Collections, for these images.
The painting was first recorded in Koch’s collection in 1963, when it was included in the
exhibition of his collection at the Cosmopolitan Club, New York.

Exhibition History
Amsterdam, Rijksmusem, 1907–12 [lent by Hoogendijk].
The Hague, Collection Goudstikker, Pulchri Studio, November, 1920, no.108.
The Hague, Kunstzaal Kleykamp, “Tentoonstelling van schilderijen door oud-Hollandsche en
Vlaamsche meesters uit de collectie Katz te Dieren,” 1934, 21, no. 60 [lent by D. Katz].
Nijmegen, “’Huize Belvoir,’ Tentoonstelling van 16e en 17e eeuwsche hollandsche,vlaamsche en italiaansche schilderijen,” 15 July–1 September 1936, no. 61 [lent by D. Katz].
Dieren, D. Katz, “Tentoonstelling van belangrijke 16e en 17e eeuwsche Hollandsche
Schilderijen,” 3 July 1937–15 September 1937, 26, no. 94.
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Los Angeles, Los Angeles Museum of Art, “An Exhibition of Old Masters,” 5 April 1938–1
May 1938 [lent by Dr. Hans Schaeffer].
Stadhuis, Deventer, “Tenteoonstelling van oude meesters der 16e en 17e eeuw in het
stadhuis te Deventer,” November 1948, no. 36.
New York, Cosmpolitan Club, “The Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John and Dora Koch,” 18January, 1963.
South Hadley, Mass., Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, “Wine and Spirit: Rituals,
Remedies, and Revelry,” 2 September–12 December 2010; Rochester, University ofRochester, Memorial Art Gallery, 29 January–10 April 2011 [lent by the present owner].
Ithaca, Cornell University, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, “An Eye For Detail: Dutch
Painting From the Leiden Collection,” September 2014–January 2015 [lent by the present
owner].
Beijing, National Museum of China, “Rembrandt and His Time: Masterpieces from The
Leiden Collection,” 17 June–3 September 2017 [lent by the present owner].
Shanghai, Long Museum, West Bund, “Rembrandt, Vermeer and Hals in the Dutch Golden
Age: Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection,” 23 September 2017–25 February 2018 [lentby the present owner].
Moscow, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, “The Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer:
Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection,” 28 March 2018–22 July 2018 [lent by the present
owner].
St. Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum, “The Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer:
Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection,” 5 September 2018–13 January 2019 [lent by thepresent owner].

References
Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch
Painters of the Seventeenth Century Based on the Work of John Smith. Edited and translatedby Edward G. Hawke, 1: 23, no. 58. 8 vols. London, 1907–28. Originally published as
Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten höllandischen
Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts. 10 vols. Esslingen and Paris, 1907–28.
Stedelijk Museum. Catalogus van schilderijen, teekeningen en beelden in het Stedelijk
Museum. Amsterdam, 1911, 351, no. 2250c.
Goudstikker, Jacques. Catalogue de la Collection Goudstikker d’Amsterdam. Exh. cat. The
Hague, Pulchri Studio. Amsterdam, 1920, n.p., no. 108.
Trautscholdt, E. “Steen.” In Thieme, Ulrich and Felix Becker, eds. Allgemeines Lexicon der© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Lazarus and the Rich Man or “In Luxury Beware”
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Bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. 37 vols. Leipzig, 1907–50, 31:511.
Konkinklijke Kunstzaal Kleykamp. Tentoonstelling van schilderijen door oud-Hollandsche en
Vlaamsche meesters uit de collectie Katz te Dieren. Exh. cat. The Hague, Koninklijke
Kunstzaal Kunstzaal Kleykamp. The Hague, 1934, 21, no. 60.
D. Katz Gallery. Tentoonstelling van 16e en 17e eeuwsche Hollandsche, Vlaamsche en
Italiaansche Schilderijen. Exh. cat. Dieren, D. Katz Gallery. Dieren, 1936, 20, no. 61.
D. Katz Gallery Katz. Tentoonstelling van belangrijke 16e en 17e eeuwsche Hollandsche
Schilderijen. Exh. cat. Dieren, D. Katz Gallery. Dieren, 1937, 26, no. 94.
Erasmus, Kurt. Catalogus van de tentoonstelling van oude meesters der 16e en 17e eeuw inhet stadhuis te Deventer. Deventer, 1948, no. 36.
De Groot, Cornelis Wilhelmus. Jan Steen: Beeld en Woord. Utrecht and Nijmegen, 1952, 23,
25, 35–36, 63–64.
Koch, John. Catalogue of the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Koch. Exh. cat. New York, The
Cosmopolitan Club. New York, 1963, 2.
De Vries, Lyckle. “Jan Steen ‘de kluchtschilder.’” PhD diss. Rijksuniversiteit Groningen,1977, 70, 88, 168.
Kirshchenbaum, Baruch D. The Religious and Historical Paintings of Jan Steen. New York,
1977, 135, no. 58, fig. 103.
Braun, Karel. Alle tot nu toe bekende schilderijen van Jan Steen. Rotterdam, 1980, 142, no.
367.
Westermann, Mariet. The Amusements of Jan Steen: Comic Painting in the SeventeenthCentury. Zwolle, 1997, 286, no. 13.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “Lazarus and the Rich Man, or “In Luxury Beware.” In Rembrandt andHis Time: Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection. Edited by Lara Yeager-Crasselt, 164;
190, no. 72. Translated by Li Ying. Exh. cat. Beijing, National Museum of China. Beijing,
2017.
Long Museum, West Bund. Rembrandt, Vermeer and Hals in the Dutch Golden Age:
Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection. Exh. cat. Shanghai, Long Museum, West Bund.
Shanghai, 2017, 176–77.
Kloek, Wouter. “Jan Steen, His Repertoire of Motifs and History Painting.” In Jan Steen’s
Histories. Edited by Ariane van Suchtelen, 48–49, no. 32. Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis.
Zwolle and The Hague, 2018.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “Lazarus and the Rich Man or ‘In Luxury Beware.’” In The Age of
Rembrandt and Vermeer: Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection. Edited by Polina
Lyubimova, 198–99; 246, no. 66. Translated by Daria Babich and Daria Kuzina. Exh. cat.
Moscow, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts; St. Petersburg, The State Hermitage
Museum. Moscow, 2018.
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Technical Summary
The support, a single piece of fine, plain-weave fabric with tacking margins removed, has been
lined. Two layers of paper tape extend into the face of the painting along all four sides. Broadcusping along the upper and lower edges and slight cusping along the vertical edges indicatesthat the support dimensions have not been significantly altered. Old tack holes visible in the Xradiograph along the right vertical edge indicate the painting was previously secured along theface of the painting. There are three import stamps and six paper labels, but no wax seals or
stencils along the lining or stretcher.
A light-colored ground has been thinly and evenly applied. The oil paint has been applied in thin,opaque layers of rich paste blended wet-into-wet with lively brushwork and no use of impasto.
Areas such as the blue sky in the upper left corner have been painted more thinly, allowing thelight-colored underlayer to show through.
No underdrawing is readily apparent in infrared images captured at 780–1000 nanometers.
Compositional changes visible in the images include the chin of the white dog standing on its hindlegs along the right side of the composition, which appears to originally have been raised morevertically. The position of the fingers of the small boy in the lower left corner appear to have beenshifted, as has the profile of the second figure from the left, gazing at the rich man.
The painting is inscribed and signed in dark paint on the stonework along the lower center, but isundated.
The painting has not undergone conservation treatment since its acquisition in 2006 and remains
in a good state of preservation.

© 2020 The Leiden Collection