, of about 1650, which is intensified by the animals and people grouped in the foreground.
The art of Pieter De Hooch (1629-after 1684) glorifies the harmony of the perfect bourgeois household, with everything in its proper place and respect for cleanliness and order raised almost to a religious level. The Linen Cupboard, of 1663, is De Hooch's Baroque climax. In this picture, illuminated by an unseen window, De Hooch depicts the simple act of counting neatly folded sheets taken from their carved and inlaid cabinet in an interior whose cleanliness matches its perfect perspective and its clear bright colour; the black-and-white marble floor leads the eye through the door to the view across the street. By means of pictures on the wall the painter shows that art is a part of the ideal daily life.
The opposite of De Hooch's religious order is the disorder of Jan Steen (1625/26-79), who revived the humour of the Late Gothic burlesque. To this day a «Jan Steen household» is the Dutch expression for a house in which nothing goes right. Everything goes wrong in The World Upside Down, which is a parody on De Hooch's Linen Cupboard. It was also intended as a moralizing picture. Jan Steen, who kept a tavern, was never tired of representing the effects of visits to him. Here the scene shifts to the kitchen; the same lady of the house in the same costume as in De Hooch's Linen Cupboard has fallen asleep; beer runs from the keg over a floor strewn with garbage, a pipe and a hat; children, a pig, a dog, a duck, and a monkey are where they ought not to be and are doing what they ought not to do. The housemaid hands a glass of wine to her sweetheart, nobody pays any attention to an elderly man reading from a book or to an old woman trying to bring some order into the situation. To intensify the effect, Steen is treating his figures with conviction and vigour.
Dutch still lifes were often intended to appeal to the eye and the palate at once. Some are crowded with an unappetizing profusion of fruit or game, but the most tasteful and tasty are those restricted to the makings of between-meals snacks (they are traditionally referred to as 'breakfast pieces'). White wine, a bit of seafood or ham, lemon, pepper, and salt are the subjects, along with polished silver, crystal goblets and a rumpled tablecloth. The spectator is tantalized not only by the delicacy with which the carefully selected objects arc painted, but also by the expensive carelessness with which a lemon has been left partly peeled and a silver cup overturned.
