Suitors’ Tree – Gerrit van Schagen, c. 1680

THE SUITORS’ TREE, C. 1680

“Dit zyn de peeren die vrysters begeeren” [These are the pears that maidens desire], copper engraving published in Amsterdam by Gerrit van Schagen, c. 1680. Coloured by a later hand. Size: 27 × 24 cm.

This humorous seventeenth-century popular print presents the search for a suitable marriage partner as a tree laden with ripe fruit. Yet instead of pears growing among its branches, the tree bears a colourful assortment of young men: the ‘peeren’ or ‘pears’ for whom the unmarried women, or “vrijsters“, according to the caption, so ardently long.

High in the crown, the prospective suitors sit closely packed together. Some play the violin, lute, flute and bass viol, while others read, write or measure a globe with a pair of dividers. The tree thus offers an entire selection of men from which to choose. At the left, Cupid flies among the branches with his bow drawn, leaving little doubt as to the nature of this human fruit waiting to be plucked.

Beneath the tree, a group of young women has gathered. They look upwards, point towards the men and inspect the available selection. One woman waters the tree, while another works among its roots with a tool. The scene thus turns the marriage market into a playful visual metaphor: the men hang like fruit from the branches, while the women below wait for the opportunity to ‘pick’ one.

The accompanying verse simultaneously pokes fun at female modesty and reticence:

Vrysters, schoon je schijnt te veynsen
Dat geen vryer u en dient,
Hier nochtans streckt al u peynsen
Hier is uwes herten vriendt.
Hier toe streckt al uw begeeren;
En hy mist die ’t niet gelooft:
Want al die den man ontbeeren,
Dat zyn Lyven zonder Hooft.

In other words: however much unmarried women may pretend that they have no need of a man, all their thoughts and desires ultimately turn towards finding a suitor. The final lines give the joke a moralising, characteristically seventeenth-century punchline: a woman without a husband is compared to a ‘body without a head’.

Price: Euro 950 (incl. frame)