Studio of Pieter Brueghel II (Brussels 1564-1638 Antwerp)

The proverb 'a good woman is not well-disposed towards a hennentaster (philanderer)' is illustrated here by a woman holding a spindle, a symbol of the domestic ideal, pulling away from a man holding a hen and thus rejecting his approaches. This proverb features in Pieter Brueghel the Elder's celebrated Netherlandish Proverbs in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin. Ertz records four versions of this proverb and lists the prime as that with Galerie de Jonckheere, Paris, in 1993 (op. cit., p. 218, no. E163).