19th Annual GC Student Research Conference

Genre scenes produced by seventeenth-century Dutch artists often evoke messages of religious pride in the cleanliness of the domestic sphere, an especially important theological virtue to Calvinists, and civic pride in the Dutch Republic’s political independence and economic wealth. Depictions of women working in modest and well appointed homes were abundant. This theme of cleanliness and Godliness reappears often in elements of Dutch Golden Age culture such as in literature, works of art, etiquette guides, and poems. Scholars, including, Simon Schama, have argued that their scenes convey the desire for a virtuous soul. Children are present within various genre scenes of domestic labor, often accompanied by a maidservant or mother engaging in the task of cleaning the home. Once twelve years of age, girls were treated as adults in regard to the care of the home and were able to be employed by other homes as servants. A Girl with a Broom, ca. 1648, attributed to the Rembrandt Workshop, depicts a young servant girl with the tools of labor commonly associated with women. She leans upon a fence, idle from her work as she holds a broom without sweeping, and gazes directly at the viewer. Children were depicted in art to either mirror the current disposition of adults influencing them, or as a predictor of their future lives as adults. In this paper I will argue that A Girl with a Broom is a painting which addresses warnings of vice in young women and issues of child labor. Children used for labor in the home were especially prone to falling astray as they aged; A Girl with a Broom illustrates this concern. Servants and their behavior was a subject depicted frequently in paintings by Nicolaes Maes. The warning of the young servant girls’ future is evident through her idleness and youth along with symbolism of her domestic tools. Idleness of youth is a vice warned against in popular sermons and literature of the Dutch Golden Age; particularly noticed in emblem books and poetry by Jacob Cats. Women were expected to be occupied with domestic duties so that they may remain virtuous and of pure soul; child servants were also expected to adhere to this discipline.