Paintings of physicians by Jan Steen

Jan Steen's painting of a physician's visit from around 1660, now at the Metropolitan Museum, belongs to a genre of Dutch paintings depicting doctors attending to lovesick young women. The comic subject, in which the pompous physician fails to diagnose the obvious cause of the patient's malady—unrequited love—satirizes both medical pretension and romantic folly. Steen painted numerous versions of this theme, which combined his talents as a narrative painter, comic moralist, and observer of domestic life.

Steen fills the interior with carefully observed domestic details that serve both descriptive and symbolic functions. His technique combines precise rendering of still-life elements with livelier, more gestural handling of figures and facial expressions.