Het scheren van de zot

In a room, to the left before the fireplace, a woman sits on the lap of a man who embraces her. In one hand she holds a glass of wine, the other she inserts into his purse. The hostess holds the tally stick. In the foreground, a man, indicated by his fool's cap as a fool or madman, is being shaved by a barber. "Shaving the fool" was a common ritual at fool's festivals in the 16th century: the shaving of criminals, vagabonds, and madmen so that they were recognizable as such. Emblem no. 33 in Emblemata Saecularia, 1596, and no. 12 in the second edition of 1611.