Jan van Beers, Belgian
Fish Market Con Artists Fleecing a Mark With a Game of Three-Cod Monte, Date Unknown
Oil on panel
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Info, or perhaps links that point to more info, about this artist can be found here, here, here (can be read in full for free on Fridays), here, here, and here, perhaps in addition to what’s in his Wikipedia page (Google translated Dutch Wikipedia page has more).
/// Friday morning. Greet set out to search
for a dinner approved by the Church.
She’d cook fish and not meat.
On The Fish Market Street,
Greet was haggling to purchase a perch.
/// The first fish which the fish monger shows
isn’t ever the one which she chose.
They’re all fresh from the ocean,
but she goes through the motion—
holding each of them up to her nose.
/// Greet suspected they held back the best.
So the first fish would fail her “sniff test.”
After prodding its flesh
to determine what’s fresh,
it smelled “fishy,” (as did all the rest).
/// She compared color, gills, weight and size,
in a manner she deemed seafood-wise.
In the end, from the bunch,
she would choose on a hunch,
having deeply looked into its eyes.
/// Her jealous mate thought he could tell
that she sleeps with the monger as well.
He first grew suspicious
when something like fishes
was sensed when his wife he would smell.