This well-appointed interior sets the scene for the courtship ritual of music-making, through which men and women became acquainted by singing and playing instruments together. The boy in the foreground, mimicking the adults, strums a cello with a pipe and breaks a string, a subtle allusion to the perils of unbridled passion. Jan Steen, one of the Dutch Republic’s most prolific comic painters, crafted his scenes upon the contemporary notion that comedy mirrors everyday life.