Jan Steen, Dutch
The Classic Rock Group Emerson, Lake & Creeper, ca. 1670
Oil on canvas
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Jan Steen, Dutch
The Classic Rock Group Emerson, Lake & Creeper, ca. 1670
Oil on canvas
Artist info is pointed to in my comment at a prior blog entry.
/// The Lute Player depicts our five senses
(although some are portrayed as offenses).
SEE the colorful maid;
HEAR the music she played;
TASTE wine; SMELL smoke his clay pipe dispenses.
/// But the way that Steen illustrates TOUCH
may, for some, be a little too much.
A letch fondles the breast
of a bimbo, half dressed,
clearly hoping that he’ll get in Dutch.
/// Seems the moral these details divulge
is: when sensing, don’t over-indulge.
Drunks are people who drink,
smokers frequently stink,
and from tasting or touching, men bulge.
/// Zaftig gal being groped starts to giggle.
She is forcing herself not to wriggle.
Her companion’s right hand
shakes her mammary gland.
It amuses him, watching them jiggle.
/// There’s a role that she knows must be played,
if she ever expects to be paid.
She pretends to feel pleasure
and that she doesn’t measure
this fool up against others she’s laid.
/// Steen has painted himself as the bro
who is drunk in this sinful tableau.
Something droops o’er the edge
of the foreground stone ledge.
(If symbolic, I don’t want to know.)
/// Art historians say that’s a candle—
much too soft and too flaccid to handle,
and it’s meant to imply
that the very drunk guy
cannot pleasure a girl. (What a scandal!)
(Still, if he can’t make love, then his hand’ll.)
/// That lute took a long time to be tuned,
so to mask off-key notes, the girl crooned.
Still, the drunk painter swooned;
the turned-on couple spooned,
and months later her belly ballooned.