3-072-293 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Unpleasant Surprise (Mismatched Couple), c1670s. Additional Info: In a spacious kitchen interior, filled with heaps of pots and pans in the foreground, which in themselves create a picturesque still life, an older man, probably a farmer, is making advances towards a young servant girl scrubbing a copper pan. An older woman that stands in the door, probably the man's wife, raises her fingers in a gesture of admonition and warning towards the mismatched couple. The painting contains a variety of erotic allusions. While a burning flame onto which a farmhand is tossing some logs brings to mind the proverb "in the old furnace, the devil strikes fire," a long feather fastened to the farmer's cap emphasises his erotic ardour and may refer to the words Cesare Ripa (ca. 1560-ca. 1622) put in his "Iconology" that "senses move as easily as feathers in a breeze." An older man's love for a young woman was already ridiculed and condemned in antiquity.