Edwin Buijsen: "Behind the Scenes of Everyday Life: Dutch Genre Painting"

Dutch genre paintings of the seventeenth century show individuals in domestic settings going about their daily activities, such as letter writing, eating and drinking, or making music. Many of these seemingly straightforward scenes, however, contain moral lessons that are difficult for us to decipher today. This lecture deals with the paintings' various levels of interpretation by focusing on examples drawn from the Mauritshuis collection, some of which were featured in the special exhibition Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis.