Tell Don't Show

Abstract

Throughout most of the seventeenth century plague epidemics raged through Dutch cities and took their toll in an enormous loss of life. However, seventeenth-century paintings of domestic life do not show the sorrow or the death toll, but portray healthy, thriving mothers and children in sunlit interiors. The sunny imagery of the seventeenth-century painting is so strong that it defies the historic reality of the countless plague victims. In a strange contradiction, up until the Dutch language harbours numerous references to The Plague, or pest as it is called in Dutch. My perception of the glorious Dutch Golden Age, and the sunny imagery if seventeenth-century interior paintings in particular, changed after reading the published transcripts of seventeenth-century Dutch letters written by women to their husbands at sea. What struck me most were the women's heartbreaking accounts of the loss of children due to The Plague. I have since tried to detect evidence of this daily reality in the paintings, given that art historians have warned against their deceptive realism.