One child is crying. One is delighted. Everyone else is pointing at the chimney. This is what a Dutch Sinterklaas morning looked like more than 350 years ago.
What you're looking at
Painted between 1665 and 1668, this busy domestic scene by Jan Steen shows a Dutch family celebrating the feast of Saint Nicholas — one of several scenes of the tradition Steen painted during the 1660s, and among the most famous images of a Dutch holiday still celebrated today. A boy stands apart in tears, holding up a shoe as proof of his own bad luck: he misbehaved, and his only reward was a switch, a bundle of twigs, rather than a gift.
Reward, punishment, and myth, all in one room
Nearby, his sister enjoys the opposite fate, showing off a doll and a bucket of sweets pulled from her own shoe. Behind the crying boy, his grandmother may be hiding away a gift for him after all, softening the household's punishment with quiet kindness. An older brother explains the whole tradition to a younger sibling, pointing up toward the chimney, the way legend says Saint Nicholas gets into the house.
On the floor, a still life of gingerbread, waffles, apples, and nuts spreads out across the room, the physical abundance of the holiday laid bare. Steen packed the entire tradition, reward and punishment and myth together, into a single crowded room.
One detail to look for
Look at the shoe held up as evidence. Placing a shoe by the fireplace or door for Saint Nicholas to fill is the exact tradition modern Dutch Sinterklaas celebrations still follow every December.
See it at its real size
Our canvas print is labeled against the true size of the original, so what you're hanging is honestly scaled to the painting Steen actually made. Shop the canvas print.