The Drawing Lesson

Jan Steen

about 1665

Oil on panel, Oil

J. Paul Getty Museum

An artist instructs a young woman in drawing in a cluttered studio filled with art supplies and anatomical models. A young boy looks on from the side. In this allegory of the status of the artist and the nature of his profession, a male artist instructs two pupils: a young boy and a fashionably dressed young woman. A plaster cast of a sculpture of a nude male seems to be the object of the day's exercise in how to draw, but the studio is filled with many other props and materials. On the table are pens, brushes, charcoal pencils, and a woodcut depicting the head of an old man. Several plaster casts hang from a shelf that supports a sculpture of an ox, the symbol of Saint Luke, the patron saint of painters. A plaster putto is suspended from the ceiling in front of a tapestry, which