Art Collections Online

This housewife is busy embroidering and selecting vegetables from a pail.  But she may not be as virtuous as she appears. The artist Brekelenkam specialized in small-scale interiors, often with hidden meanings.  The Dutch verb naaien (to sew) also means to copulate, while onions were considered to be aphrodisiacs.  Cut flowers warn against short-lived pleasures and closed books suggest human ignorance.  The bed in the background suggests this woman may be a prostitute.