Celebrating company, Isack Elias, c. 1620

by Hans Levendig (lev&dig fotografie)

Celebrating company, Isack Elias, c. 1620 Probably in Haarlem.
Panel, 47 × 63 cm, signed.
The persons in this depiction of Elyas can be divided into two groups, on the one hand the standing couple on the right side of the composition looking straight out across the picture plane, and on the other the generally more active figures around the table. Given their various actions, these characters must be assumed to represent the five senses. They do so in the characteristically disguised manner common at this time, around 1620.
The Hearing is represented by the lute player, the Face by the elderly, singing man holding a paper with text in his right hand, the Taste by the man with the upside-down glass (who forms a duo with the girl next to him), the Sense by the standing boy taking off his hat and the Smell by the woman with the little dog on her lap. Completely clear is the division. The Taste and the Feeling may be interchanged here. In itself, this is not exceptional; the ways in which the senses were depicted in the 17th century were diverse and sometimes, in our eyes at least, far-fetched. This is in contrast to the iconography of the senses in the 16th century, which was supported by more or less fixed personifications and attributes.