11

Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem (1562-1638)
A monk squeezing the breast of a nun. Painted in or shortly before 1591. Canvas, 116 × 103 cm.

Haarlem, Frans Halsmuseum, inv. nr. 1–50. From the Prinsenhof, for which it was purchased in 1591 by the township of Haarlem from the artist.

For two alternative interpretations of the painting – one as an attack on monastic morals, the other as a miraculous proof of the triumph of true faith – see the text. The earliest known interpretation, in a mid-eight-eenth-century description of the paintings in the Haarlem town hall and Prinsenhof, sees it as a satire. In the context of the commission – the painting was ordered for a building that had shortly before been confiscated from the Catholic church – this seems the most likely explanation. However, the expressions of the two figures seem to this viewer more pious than prurient.

Biesboer 1983, p. 28