A Tailor's Workshop

Trades and domestic industry were popular subjects in seventeenth-century Dutch painting. In most images of tailors we see them at work at their foremost activity, cutting the cloth, just like in the present painting by Pieter van Slingeland. As a tailor worked on pieces of cloth brought on to him, he did not have a supply of textiles in his shop; on the shelf behind the tailor seen here, too, there are only a few pieces, no doubt brought by clients to be worked on. There is a good supply of thread, however, hanging in a bunch from the ceiling. The tailor and his apprentices are working close to the window, their trade requires good light. The master is cutting carefully, his glasses on his nose, one assistant is concentrating on stitching, while the other is picking a thread from the bunch. This painting could well function as an allegory of Sight.