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Interior with Two Pairs of Lovers and a Fool
Johann Liss (German, c.1597-1629/31)
1625/29
- Medium
- Etching on ivory laid paper
- Classification
- Dimensions
- 16.7 × 20.7 cm (6 5/8 × 8 3/16 in.)
- Culture
- Germany
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- Stanley Field Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
As the prominent curtains imply, this boisterous genre scene by the itinerant German artist Johann Liss likely takes place in the cosy interior of a brothel. In a gesture typical of northern European sensitivities, the crouching fool covers much of his face with his hand, yet fixes the viewer in his gaze. By enjoying the sensory delights on display—music and lovemaking— the viewer is implicated as part of the scene. Liss may have produced this print in Venice at the end of his career; the print’s lightly moralistic tone is equally at home in southern Europe.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
