Existing comment:
Jan Miense Molenaer
Allegory of Marital Fidelity, 1633
This painting, once thought to portray a simple musical gathering, is now considered a complex allegory about successful marriage. The man pouring the wine so precisely acts out the virtue of temperance of moderation. The musicians, keeping time to the music they make, represent harmony. Their restraint contrasts with the unrestrained peasants at left, who brawl with murderous results.
The fashionably dressed couple, far right, are probably newlyweds. Their dog, a familiar symbol of fidelity, guards them. The painting commemorates the couple's mutual pledge to pursue domestic peace and harmony and to control their baser natures, possibly symbolized by the chained monkey. |