A Young Woman at a Window with a Parrot and a Birdcage

The artist, Pieter Cornelisz. van Slingeland, was extremely successful in his day. His paintings sold for as much as 600 florins, which is roughly more than twice what the average annual household income was in 1650.

Woman
This painting is of a woman with a parrot on her finger, but the symbols tell a second story.

Cage, bird
The cage symbolizes the bonds of respectable love, and the bird represents a woman. Inside the cage, the bird—and thus, the woman— is safe and protected. A bird outside of a cage represented a woman who was free, but also vulnerable.

Bird
The cage door is open, and the woman holds the bird firmly on her finger. Is she freeing the bird, or about to put it inside the cage? Dutch artists at the time often created images that were ambiguous; they liked to leave it up to the viewer to interpret their meaning.

Birdcage
Note how three-dimensional the birdcage seems. Slingeland was known for his very detailed style.

Hair
The strands of hair escaping the bun are incredibly detailed and thin. Slingeland was trained by Dutch artist Gerrit Dou, who was rumored to have painted with a brush so fine it had only a single hair.

Apron
The apron the woman wears is nearly translucent. Once, while painting a family portrait, Slingeland allegedly took six weeks to paint the lace on a child’s collar.

Imagine how long the texture of this fabric would have taken to perfect.

Ledge
The young woman leans over the ledge, as if about to come into our space. Even the birdcage seems to tip forward toward us.

This type of composition was common at the time and is called trompe-l’oeil, in which artists playfully create images that seem 3-D to “fool the eye”— the meaning of the phrase in French.