Okay, I want you to close your eyes for a second.
We're going on a little trip. Imagine you just
walked into a room in the Dutch Republic, maybe
around 1668. And the first thing that hits you
is the noise. It is just deafeningly loud. There's
a bagpipe screeching. People are shouting over
the music. A dog is probably barking somewhere.
It sounds like a party you walked into by mistake.
Or maybe one you've been looking for all night.
Then the smell hits you. Pipe smoke. Heavy and
sweet, mixed with spilled wine and roasted meat.
You're really painting a picture. And visually,
it's just chaos. But it's this warm, inviting
chaos. You see a family, three generations of
them, all crammed around a table. The colors
are incredibly rich. Deep violets, warm oranges,
shimmering pinks. It feels cozy. It feels like
a celebration. Right. But here's the thing. While
it looks like a scene of, you know, domestic
bliss, we are actually looking at a crime scene.
A moral crime scene anyway. Exactly. Today we
are unpacking one of the absolute heavyweights
of the Dutch Golden Age. We're looking at John
Steen's masterpiece, As the Old Sing, So Pipe
the Young. Which is hanging in the Mauritius
in the Hague right now. And I think it's terrifying
parents just as effectively today as it did 350
years ago. Terrifying is the right word, isn't
it? Despite how cheerful it all looks. It's a
trap. Sting draws you in with these warm colors
and the laughing faces. And then once you're
comfortable, he hits you with the lecture. It's
a masterclass in satire. So the mission for this
deep dive is to figure out how Steen pulls off
this magic trick. We're going to sort of read
this painting like a book. Yeah, decode it. Decode
the symbols, the history, and this very specific
anxiety that was plaguing Dutch society in the
17th century. Because this isn't just a picture
of a messy party. It's a manifesto on nature
versus nurture. That's the core of it, really.
And to understand that, we have to start with
that incredible title, As the Old Sing, So Pipe
the Young. In Dutch, that's, what was it? Suvorgzongen
Suenagapiepen. Exactly. It sounds distinctly
like a proverb. I know the Dutch in the 1600s
loved their proverbs almost as much as they loved
their tulips. They absolutely did. And this one
comes from a man named Jacob Katz, who was basically
the Dr. Phil or the moral grandfather of the
Netherlands at the time. His poetry books were
in almost every household. Right next to the
Bible. Wow. And the proverb is pretty literal
on the surface. Just as the old birds sing, the
young birds pipe or chirp the same tune. So monkey
see, monkey do. Essentially. Yeah. But we have
to place this in the context of the Dutch Golden
Age. This was a society that had suddenly become
incredibly wealthy. You had merchants and brewers
making fortunes that their parents could only
dream of. And with that new money came a massive
societal anxiety. Yes. Are we ruining our children?
A tale as old as time, right? The fear that the
next generation will be soft or spoiled because
they didn't have to struggle. Exactly. And the
Dutch had a very specific pseudoscientific view
on this. They saw inheritance as a two -sided
coin. On one side, you had blood, nature. You
inherit your father's nose, your mother's eyes.
But the other side was behavior or nurture. They
believed a child's character was like soft wax.
Oh, I see where this is going. If a parent acted
like a fool, they were literally stamping foolishness
into the soul of their child. That puts an immense
amount of pressure on parents. It's not just
don't do bad things. It's if you do bad things,
you are biologically programming your child to
be a disaster. Precisely. And Janstein was obsessed
with this idea. He painted this specific theme,
the bad family, something like... 13 times. Yeah.
But this version we're looking at is the definitive
one. It's the sharpest, most complex take. Okay,
so let's get into the visual evidence. We're
looking at a large canvas. It's pretty commanding,
and it's dominated by these three generations.
Let's start with the old who are doing the singing,
the grandmother. Right, in the foreground. She's
sitting there looking a bit flushed, and she's
holding a sheet of music wide open. Art historians
are pretty sure this is modeled after Steen's
own mother. Oh, really? Yeah. And she isn't just
reading the music. She is belting it out. She
represents the decree, you know, the example
being set. And then next to her, we have the
parents. And this is where it gets really interesting.
The father, the guy on the right in the black
hat who looks like he's having the time of his
life. That's John Steen. That's him. A self -portrait.
He didn't paint himself as like the wise man
in the corner shaking his head. He painted himself
as the ringleader of the circus. And look what
he's doing. He's laughing maniacally and he's
holding a pipe out to his son. He is literally
teaching his young child to smoke tobacco. It's
such a shocking image even today. You see a toddler
basically reaching for a pipe and his father
isn't stopping him. He's encouraging him. And
this is where the visual pun comes in. The proverb
says, as the old sing. So piped the young. In
Dutch, piping can mean singing like a bird. But
it also means smoking a pipe. Exactly. So Steen
is being very clever. The father smokes a pipe
so the son learns to smoke a pipe. The metaphor
becomes completely literal. And the mother isn't
exactly helping. She's the woman in the lavender
skirt and that green coat, which, by the way,
is beautifully painted. Oh, he was a master of
texture. And that's his wife, Marguerite van
Goyen. Notice her posture. She's relaxed, leaning
back. Her glass is empty. But she has it outstretched
and a servant is pouring her a refill. Yes. So
grandma's loud, dad is getting the kid hooked
on nicotine, and mom is getting drunk. It's a
trifecta of vice. And because they're doing it,
the children are following suit. You see the
younger son with the pipe, but the older son,
the boy on the bench, he's playing the bagpipes.
Which, to a 17th century viewer, was a huge red
flag. Right. Let's pause on the bagpipes because
today I see bagpipes and I think, oh, some folk
music, maybe a Scottish parade or something.
Not in the Dutch Republic. This is a crucial
cultural code. In the 1600s, sophisticated people
played the lute or the harpsichord, instruments
that required study, precision. They represented
harmony. And the bagpipe. The bagpipe was a peasant
instrument. It was loud. It was droning. And
it was associated with. Body village festivals,
drinking, debauchery. And wasn't there a physical
connotation to the shape of it? Oh, absolutely.
It was undeniably phallic. In Dutch slang and
folklore, the bagpipe was often a euphemism for,
well, for male genitalia or sexual appetite.
So having the son play it isn't just about him
being loud. No. Steen is signaling that the boy
is becoming low. He's adopting the morals of
a drunk peasant. He's heading down a path of
lust and, you know. Lack of control. That's devastating.
The parents clearly have money. You can tell
by the clothes, the silver platter, the expensive
carpet on the table. But their son is behaving
like a peasant because of their example. Exactly.
Money can't buy class, and it certainly doesn't
buy good parenting. That's the warning. This
whole idea of mimicry seems to be everywhere
in the painting. I'm looking at the top left
corner, and there's a parrot. Yes, the parrot.
Now, usually in Dutch art, a parrot means exotic
trade, wealth. It's a status symbol. Look at
us. We can afford a bird from the tropics. Right.
But here, Steen is using the parrot for its biological
trait. What does a parrot do? It repeats whatever
it hears without understanding it. It's a mindless
mimic. Yeah. The parrot is the mascot of this
family. It doesn't have a moral compass. It just
reflects the noise around it, just like the children.
Wow. That is such a sharp detail. And right near
the parrot, there's another birdcage, a smaller
one. Yes, with two birds inside. This is a classic
Dutch visual rhyme. Two birds in a small cage
was often a metaphor for two parents in a small
abode or the domestic partnership. It emphasizes
that the rot starts at the head in the marriage
itself. And speaking of the marriage, there's
a detail I noticed that connects Steen and his
wife, the figures in the painting. They're both
wearing pink ribbons. She has one in her hair.
He has one on his hat. Good eye. That's more
than fashion. It's a visual link. It implies
they are cut from the same spool. It unifies
them in their guilt. You can't just blame. The
father or just the mother, they are tied together
in this conspiracy of bad parenting. I love how
these paintings are like onions. You peel back
party, you get bad parenting, you peel that back,
and you get sexual vice. Because there's food
on the table, too. Specifically, oysters. Ah,
the oyster. The most charged food in art history.
It's never just a snack, is it? Never. In the
17th century, the oyster was the ultimate symbol
of aphrodite love, sexual availability, fertility.
Yeah. It was considered an aphrodisiac. But didn't
you say that symbol was a bit... Retro by the
1660s? I did. You have a sharp memory. It had
faded a bit, yes. Steen bringing it back here
is significant. He's reviving this old symbol
of gluttony and lust to show that the parents'
appetites aren't just for wine and tobacco. They're
consumed by their own desires. And when you're
focused on your own pleasure, the pipe, the cup,
the oyster, you aren't looking at your kids.
It's the definition of negligence. They're present
physically, but absent morally. And I guess the
pipe wordplay comes back again. You've got the
smoking pipe, the bagpipe. In an old Dutch, a
specific type of tall wine glass or vessel was
also sometimes called a peep. So you have this
triple pun running through the whole image. Smoking,
music, drinking, all covered by the title. That
is just incredibly dense storytelling. It's like
a meme, basically. A very high -effort, oil -painted
meme. It is. And that brings us to the man himself,
Jan Steen. We need to talk about why he painted
himself as the villain. I mean, that's a bold
move. It feels risky, especially since Steen
had a bit of a reputation in real life, didn't
he? He did. He came from a Catholic family in
Leiden. His father was a brewer, which explains
the comfort with alcohol, but the business struggled.
Steen himself was constantly in financial trouble.
He ran a tavern for a while, moved cities to
dodge creditors. He lived a chaotic life. Isn't
there a Dutch saying about that? Yes, to this
day. A John Steen household. No way. People still
say that. They do. If you walk into a house that's
messy, loud, and disorganized, you say, it's
a John Steen household in here. Yeah. He became
the icon of domestic chaos. So by painting himself
as the laughing, irresponsible father, he's leaning
into the brand. He's winking at the audience.
He knows you know who he is. But there's a deeper
layer to that laughing face. In 17th century
philosophy, the wise man was serious, stoic,
laughter. Laughter was the mark of the fool.
The drunkard. So it's self -deprecation. He's
casting himself as the fool. He is. But this
raises a fascinating question about his patrons.
Who is buying this painting? We know his work
was collected by respectable people. Doctors,
lawyers, pharmacists. That seems counterintuitive.
Why would a respectable doctor want a painting
of a drunk smoking family hanging in his hallway?
Two reasons. First, the technique. He was an
incredible painter. The way he captures light,
the sheen of the silk, the smoke hanging in the
air. It's beautiful to look at. It's visually
pleasing, even if the subject is ugly. Right.
But secondly, and more importantly, it served
a didactic purpose. It was a conversation piece.
The doctor could invite his friends over, point
to the painting, and say, look at this disaster.
This is what happens if you lose control. Thank
goodness we aren't like that. Ah, so it's schadenfreude.
It's a way to signal your own virtue by contrasting
it with the vice on the wall. I keep this to
remind myself what not to be. Exactly. It allowed
them to enjoy the transgressive thrill of the
party. Because, let's be honest, the party looks
fun while maintaining their moral superiority.
It's the same reason we watch reality TV shows
about hoarding. We get to gawk at the mess and
feel better about our own laundry pile. That
is the perfect modern parallel. We haven't changed
much in 350 years. But I keep coming back to
Steen's face in the painting. He looks so happy.
Knowing about his life, though, the debts, the
struggles. Is there a tragedy hidden in there?
That's the interpretation that has gained traction
in recent years. You can view this as a funny
satire to sell to rich people. But you can also
view it as a confession. Steen had children.
He knew he wasn't the perfect provider. He knew
the brewery was failing. When he paints himself
teaching his son to smoke, is he laughing because
it's a joke? Or is he laughing because it's the
truth? That adds such a heavy, melancholic undertone
to the whole thing. It stops being just a cartoon
and becomes a very personal admission of guilt.
It does. And I think that's why Steen is a master.
If this were just a finger -wagging sermon, we
would have forgotten it. But because he puts
himself in the center of it, because he makes
the vice look so warm and human, it sticks with
you. It really does. It makes you look at your
own habits. We worry about screen time today,
parents on their phones while the kids watch,
but Steen was worrying about pipe time. The technology
changes, but the dynamic is identical. The mirror
is still reflective. The painting asks the viewer,
what are you modeling? What song are you singing?
Because whatever it is, your children are going
to pipe it right back at you. That is a sobering
thought to end on. We started with a party. And
we ended with an existential crisis about parenting.
That is the Jan Steen experience. I want to leave
you with one final thought to mull over. We've
talked about the noise, the smoke, the warning.
But look at the painting one last time in your
mind. The door is open. The light is flooding
in. The viewer is standing right at the threshold.
Steen isn't just showing us a family. He's inviting
us in. He's offering us a chair. And the question
isn't just, are they bad parents? The question
is... Are you going to sit down and join them?
Because the party looks pretty good and the moral
high ground is lonely. A dangerous invitation.
Indeed. Thanks for taking this deep dive with
us. Until next time.