Gillis (also Egidius, Jelis) van Breen, Netherlandish printmaker. He was a pupil of Hendrick Goltzius and effectively imitated and adopted his engraving style. Van Breen is often confused with another contemporary Goltzius pupil, Nicolaes Braeu. However, recent research clarified that Nicolaes Braeu and Gillis van Breen were two distinct engravers.
This engraving was executed after a composition by Karel van Mander. It shows a dapper gentleman embraced by two prostitutes at an inn. Behind them is a curtain, suggesting a bed or some private space. Two dogs lick at a morsel in the man’s outstretched hand. An innkeeper and a serving boy bring food out of the kitchen in the background. The print bears a legend in Italian and Dutch which can be translated as “The nuzzle of dogs, the love of whores, the hospitality of innkeepers: None of it comes without cost.”
Gillis van Breen, a Haarlem printmaker, was one of the apprentices in Hendrick Goltzius’s workshop.
In several 17th-century Dutch prints and texts birds refer to lasciviousness and the Dutch verb ‘vogelen’ (to bird) to sexual intercourse. In the shown engraving by Gillis van Breen, an aged, lecherous man sells bird. The inscription, a dialogue between the man and his female customer, informs us that the dead bird on top of the basket by his feet has already been sold “to a faire alewife whom I bird all year round.”
