This picture is a late example of Dutch classicism, which itself had grown out of a change in approach by the Caravaggesques in the later 1620s, a style which the artist himself had embraced in his earlier work. As in so many pictures of this type, there are sexual overtones and this always comes as a surprise to those who see Dutch art entirely in Protestant moral terms. At the very same period in Amsterdam, Rembrandt himself was experimenting with pictures of overtly sexual subject matter.

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