Netherlands: 'Merry Company' (Brothel Scene), oil on oak panel, Jan Sanders van Hemessen (1500-1579), 1537

The English 'brothel' comes from the French bordel or 'place of prostitution'.

Jan Sanders van Hemessen (c. 1500 – c. 1566) was a leading artist of the second generation of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting, belonging to the group of Italianizing Flemish painters called the Romanists, who were influenced by Italian Renaissance painting. Unlike some of these Hemessen had visited Italy at least once, and also Fontainebleau, where there was at the time a colony of Italian artists, the First School of Fontainebleau, working on the palace there.

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Pictures From History