The Physician's Visit

This 1664 painting of The Physician's Visit depicts a doctor examining a lovesick patient, one of the most popular subjects in Dutch genre painting. The scene satirizes both the pretensions of medical science and the folly of love-sickness, themes close to Steen's comic genius. Steen's doctor-visit scenes use diagnosis of love-sickness as a vehicle for gentle satire of human folly, combining sympathy for the afflicted young woman with mockery of the pompous physician. These paintings are rend...

The medical scene demonstrates Steen's theatrical staging, with the pompous physician, the wilting patient, and knowing bystanders arranged in a composition that reads like a comic play.