Nicolaes Maes, 'A Little Girl rocking a Cradle', about 1655

A little girl looks out at us from her child-sized chair, as if eager for us to tell her that she’s doing her job well – her smile a little nervous, the hand on the handle of the cradle clutching it tight. She looks no more than five years old, but she’s been given the responsibility of looking after the baby that sleeps soundly, button nose in the air. The baby’s mouth is open, and a tiny fist is almost hidden in cumbersome garments.

The warm browns and reds that Maes chooses for his painting, and the deep shadows and softly gleaming light on the little girl’s forehead and collar, invite us into this cosy, intimate place. The same colours and chiaroscuro – the contrast between light and shade – also tell of Maes’s training with Rembrandt, who was a master of the techniques needed to create the candlelit interior of a Dutch house at the time.

The child, like the room, is neat and clean, the two watchwords of the respectable household. Her hair is impeccable under the bonnet tied with a tiny bow under her chin. Her rosy cheeks speak of her health. On her arm she has a cuff to protect her heavy dress sleeve, which can be removed for washing. Maes places her white apron over the other arm partly to show its cleanliness, partly to set off the textures of the cuff and the little girl’s hand.

Many pictures were painted to show this ideal of family life. To have one on the wall was a good example to family and servants alike, and to show to visitors the standards they aspired to. This is an affluent home. Maes painted for an affluent Dordrecht clientele. He paints the textures in minute detail: the strongly woven wicker cradle on its wooden rockers, the gleaming jug, the pattern of the Turkish carpet on the table. Carpets of this kind, brought into the newly prosperous country from the Middle East, were too expensive to be put on the floor, but were put on a table for display and usually, but not always, rolled back for a meal.

The picture also serves to emphasise the expectations of a girl in the Dutch Republic. Marriage and motherhood awaited the well brought up girl child – there was little or no alternative. They might assist in the family business, but generally the home was their domain. Although Maes has lit the little girl sympathetically, accentuated her charm and the reassuring solidity of the wood-panelled room, he has concentrated the brightest light on the large book on the table and on the jug with its tightly closed lid. The book is old and well thumbed, most probably a Bible, the basis of all children’s moral education.