The day after I wrote about our St Nikolaus tradition, I sat down for five minutes with a cup of coffee and the parish magazine and came across a reference to this painting by Jan Steen in there. It’s one of several works of his on the same theme and I decided I wanted to find out more.
So I did what we all do now and googled.
I found several references to the work, including this one, which informs me he was born in Leiden. What a good job I didn’t know that before our game of Trivial Pursuit the other night, for one of my questions was “Which artist was born in Leiden?”. I delighted my family and surprised my friends* by answering correctly, “Rembrandt”. But had I read about Jan Steen before now, I might have answered differently – a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Anyway, I thought I’d go to what looked like a reliable source of information, the Rijksmuseum website and oh my goodness. What an invitation to fun lies there!
Who knew the parish magazine could be so distracting? Needless to say, it’s a huge temptation to explore that site but as the washing machine needs emptying, the ironing basket overflows and the Christmas cards sit looking at me, awaiting some attention I really mustn’t allow myself to look now. But when I get a few minutes to myself, I’ll open this link again and see what lies in store.
And now I’ll go back to what I should be doing…after I’ve blogged, of course 
*one of my favourite quotes from a much loved source
