Kandaules’ Wife Discovering the Hiding Gyges

Eros and Death are closely linked in this story of the forbidden gaze at female nudity. Lydian King Kandaules urges his friend Gyges to secretly convince himself of the beauty of his wife Nyssia, and pays for the pride in his possession with his life. Nyssia discovers the voyeur hidden behind the bed curtain and, to regain her honour, challenges him to either kill Kandaules and marry her or to himself die. Gyges murders his friend and thus becomes the instrument of a strong woman, the roles of victim and perpetrator are inverted, as the person seeking revenge wins out in this example of marital honour. The viewer as ‘voyeur’ participates in the dishonouring, and contemporaries may have been reminded of Jakob Cats’ "The Doctrine of Morality" (1622): Each should look only at what is his. In fact, the painting here touches on questions of the ‘right’ way to see in art, and on the interplay of images in images, and of interlocking pictorial spaces. Van der Neer worked at the Düsseldorf Court of Johann Wilhelm von der Pfalz from 1690 onwards. (Bettina Baumgärtel)