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Dutch before 1650
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Jan Miense Molenaer (Dutch, about 1610-1668)
The Dentist, 1629
Oil on panel, 23 1/8 x 31 9/16 in. (58.8 x 80.1 cm.)
Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, 52.9.50
Dentists, particularly itinerant dentists of the type pictured here, were routinely portrayed in seventeenth-century Dutch art and literature as unscrupulous quacks and charlatans. In one of his first dated pictures, Molenaer provides the viewer with a satirical look at a peasant having a tooth removed. Clearly, his pain is not eased by the rosary he clutches in his hand, and the laughing woman standing behind the dentist is hardly sympathetic to his plight. The gaudily dressed dentist is probably far more concerned with extracting money from his young patient than his tooth.
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