Steen\'s Rhetoricians at a Window:

¶ … Steen's Rhetoricians at a Window: A Visual Analysis

Rhetoricians at a Window is a painting by Jan Steen in the Baroque style. The painting is one of Steen's best, in its rich attention to detail, mastery of light, and elegant choice of colors. In this essay, I will analyze the formal attributes of Steen's painting in order to show why this is a superb work of art.

In Rhetoricians at a Window, we can discern a total of six male figures inside a house, gathered around an open window looking out on the street down below. On the left side, we see an overweight man with glasses reading from a piece of paper in his hands. He has glasses perched on his nose and his head is bald. Great attention has been paid by the painter to the frilly sleeves of the man's white shirt. With the perfect combination of light reflecting off the shirt and the shadows depicted in the folds, the shirt almost looks real. Opposite the overweight man is a figure with a stern expression on his face holding a black jug. He wears a gray hat with a pipe perched in the rim and rests his head on his fist. The expression on his face - which clearly states that he is not amused - provides a comical contrast to the jolly demeanor of the overweight man. It also presents a balance in the overall emotional composition of the piece, which Steen must be commended for.

The light in the foreground of the painting is contrasted with the darkness in the back, which is the darkness of the house's interior. We can judge by the lighting that it must be late afternoon - not yet dark enough to light the candles in the house, hence the need to gather by the window in order for the heavier rhetorician to read the text by the fading sunlight.

A mischievous grin adorns the face of the most striking figure in the center-right of the image, standing directly above the frowning man holding the pitcher. In terms of color, he interrupts the composition in the middle of the painting, which is filled with muddy browns, beiges, whites, and grays - from the clothing worn by the men to the rust colored pitcher. It is the goofy red hat crowning his head that draws our attention to him, which leads our gaze down to his goofy expression and extended finger. The fact that he is the only figure in the painting that stares out directly at us, thus acknowledging the viewer's presence, also places him at the center of the painting.

Below the rhetoricians, the painter renders the brickwork on the house in precise, intricate detail - you almost expect to feel the rugged, cold stone if you were to reach out and touch the painting. The one odd detail of the painting is the blazon that appears in the lower half in the center. It is cut off at the bottom of the painting, so we are unable to see the whole thing, but we can tell that it is shaped like a diamond and black with red and yellow tracings on the inside. This gives it almost an occult-like appearance. According to Krajewski, the blazon hanging from the window displays an emblem of a particular rederijker group. The emblem [not visible in this image of the painting] consists of crossed pipes and a wineglass, which are underneath an inscription that reads, "the green laurel shoot." The emblem tells us that the rederijkers were "as much social as literary."

The rhetoricians played a major role in entertaining the populace of Holland in the 1600s. This is one of many paintings Steen produced in homage to them. It is also likely that Steen was a good friend with many rhetoricians, as they often worked closely with artists, who would provide the backdrops for their dramatic performances. The painting is warm, open, and friendly in tone; while the one figure in the lower right has a stern expression on his face, it is still somehow blackly comic. There is nothing perverse or morbid about this image. The painter is clearly fond of the rhetoricians he pays homage to, even if he finds them to be mildly ridiculous in a certain way - which, as popular entertainers, they probably were.