Sleeping Student

This panel is a genre piece and shows a young student asleep at his desk, one hand tucked into his jacket. In front of him are his gloves, a notebook, a pen and inkhorn, and six books, five of them piled up in a towerlike arrangement, which becomes the focus of the composition. Probably the painting conveys a moral message. It can be seen as a vanitas picture. Alternatively, it could be viewed as a representation of one of the seven deadly sins: sloth.