1 Secondly, we may well ask: Where were these paintings hung? Evidence suggests they found a place in the halls and living quarters of respectable people. In the first place: Who bought these pictures? In a country where prostitution, procuring, and adultery were criminal offenses, where the word hoererij (whoredom) denoted any kind of nonmarital sexual intercourse, and where religious piety was deeply felt not only by Calvinists but by people of other denominations, a market still existed for pictures of half-nude, lascivious women whose charms were obviously for sale. 10786 (artwork in the public domain) īrothel scenes ( bordeeltjes) are a familiar type of seventeenth-century Dutch genre painting ( fig. 1 Gerrit van Honthorst, The Procuress, 1625, oil on panel, 71 x 104 cm. In the paintings (and in prints) women are depicted as seducers and men as fools, the forbidden sexuality they portray being implicitly blamed on the women, who are understood as being inspired by the devil.įig. Ultimately, both painted types owe a greater debt to visual traditions and cultural views of women than to the historical record. These real-life women stand in contrast to the attractive and luxuriously clad whores and the old and ugly procuresses in the bordello paintings. Drawing on a multitude of observations from the criminal records, the essay lays out the main characteristics of this trade, including descriptions of the behavior and the appearance of both the bawds who operated as “peddlers of vice” and the prostitutes in their thrall. Although the Protestant Dutch Republic criminalized prostitution, it still flourished, above all, in the port city of Amsterdam. The basic layout of an inn consisted of a hall, kitchen, stables, a storage area or cellar (sometimes filled also with strong boxes), the chamber (for most medieval inns, this consisted of several straw beds in the back common room), accommodation for the innkeeper and his family, and sometimes private rooms that could be rented to local guilds or for events.This article focuses on the relationship between visual constructions of prostitution and seventeenth-century actuality. The food served at inns was simple: pottage (stew), bread and cheese, and drinks from local vintners and breweries and sometimes exotic wines and beer from all over Europe and the world. It wasn’t uncommon for political uprisings and mobs to begin within an inn. Inns were places where people met to socialize and talk, making them cultural and political hotbeds. There was usually a minimal entry fee to pass through the door of an alehouse or inn, or at least a courtesy to help pay for any damages that may arise while visiting (modern-day “bouncers” derive from the practice of inn guards testing the authenticity of coins by bounding them off of a wet piece of wood!). While medieval inns tended to focus on accommodation and food, taverns were commonly owned by licensed brewers and vintners and focused more on drinking. The inn of a town was usually found in a central location such as the town square or in places where trade roads met and usually became landmarks of their settlement. Because they wouldn’t be able to sleep safely outside at night, this led to the need to establish alehouses and inns.Ī regular provision of inns existed following the size and importance of the towns and played a vital role in the evolving and prospering economic, social, and political life of the different regions. Travelers usually moved in groups and during the day. Traveling on foot or with lightly loaded horses was, therefore, preferred.īetween the villages, there were long stretches of forest. The roads were bad, sometimes even impassable for loaded wagons (and not to mention, frequently visited by outlaws and robbers). Inn-keeping was formalized around the 14th and 15th centuries, when traveling was much more common than we normally imagine.
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