De betrapte echtgenoot 1601

Gillis van Breen created this engraving, *De betrapte echtgenoot,* sometime around 1600. The image portrays a cuckolded husband, a theme rooted in early modern European anxieties about social order and morality. Van Breen renders the scene with striking emotional intensity. We see the husband reacting with a scream as his hair is pulled, while his wife is being felt up. What does it mean when intimacy is observed, manipulated, and commodified? The image is a powerful articulation of both the shame and the economics of infidelity. The composition has the man on the left, being pulled towards the woman on the right, almost trapped in the image. The setting creates a feeling of enclosure and surveillance. The text beneath the image offers a moralizing commentary, further reinforcing the social norms and expectations of the time. This work reveals a fascinating interplay between personal experience and collective values, reflecting the complex dynamics of gender, class, and reputation in early modern society.