The Sick Woman
Also titled De zieke vrouw
Jan Havicksz. Steen (Leiden, ca. –1679)
c. 1663 - c. 1666
- Medium
- canvas, oil paint (paint)
- Classification
- painting
- Dimensions
- height 76 cm x width 63.5 cm
- Museum
- Rijksmuseum
- Credit line
- On loan from the City of Amsterdam (A. van der Hoop Bequest)
- Rights
- Public Domain Mark, as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
About this work
Faint from fever, the young woman rests her head on a pillow. Is she perhaps lovesick? Is she pregnant? To find out, a quack would put a strip of his patient’s clothing in a brazier to smoulder – the scent would disclose her secret. Jan Steen here presents such a charlatan making a diagnosis. His old-fashioned attire characterizes him as a comic character.
