This is the interior of a brothel. On the left, three men drink with the women who work there, whose skirts are hoisted up to show their legs. On the right, we see a group of entertainers: a boy does a headstand on a stool; a small dog has perhaps already jumped through the hoop on the floor. An unkempt man with bagpipes has been accompanying the tricks. In the background, a man, flagon raised, embraces a woman, while in the top left corner a couple are closing the door of a bedroom.
Pictures of inns and brothels were increasingly in demand in the sixteenth century, and at least five brothel scenes are attributed to the Brunswick Monogrammist. He did two versions of this composition, with different details in the background. Our painting is an enlarged version of a panel in the Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht; a variant can be seen in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp. The original compositions were probably invented by the Brunswick Monogrammist and repeated with small variations by his followers.
This is the interior of a brothel. On the left, three men drink with the women who work there, whose skirts are hoisted up to show their legs. On the right we see a group of entertainers: a boy is doing a headstand on a stool, a small dog has perhaps already jumped through the metal hoop on the floor. An unkempt man with bagpipes has been accompanying the tricks. One woman hands a glass of wine to another, who also holds the dog’s lead. In the background a man embraces another woman with one arm and raises a flagon in the air with the other, while in the top left corner a couple are closing the door of a bedroom behind them.
Pictures of inns and brothels were increasingly in demand in the sixteenth century, and at least five brothel scenes are attributed to the Brunswick Monogrammist. He did two versions of this composition, with different details in the background. Our painting is an enlarged version of a panel in the Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht; a variant can be seen in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp. The original compositions were probably invented by the Brunswick Monogrammist and repeated with small variations by his followers.
