A Monk and a Nun, Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem (1591)
A monk squeezes a nun’s breast. The explanation of this picture most often given is that it is a sixteenth-century satire on the dissolute lives of those living in cloisters: monks and nuns were frequently accused of drunkenness, gluttony, avarice and licentious behaviour. The wine and the fruit would therefore allude to an immoral life.
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