Cinderella! Cinderella!: A closer look into Dutch seventeenth-century gender roles and genre paintings

Abstract

This article highlights a time when Northern artists were no longer allowed to paint or carve holy images as they had done during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The Catholic Church banned this art form due to the interpretation of the second commandment: ‘Thou shalt make no graven image of thy God’. Genre paintings were the outcome of this banishment and a way to represent and depict an everyday life scene in a Dutch seventeenth-century household. The paintings would show the best of a situation and also its worst counterpart in almost a mocking comical way. By exploring these paintings, we come to understand how women were fed propaganda into becoming a better housewife, mother and bearing the weight of physical nourisher to all. Although amusing, the images have been celebrated and considered legendary during the Golden Age of the Netherlands. While taking a closer look at genre paintings and the everyday practices of the Dutch household, we can connect patterns to how these paintings affected women and influenced their domestic duties in the Golden Age.