Thursday February 12, 2009 13:41
David Teniers the Younger (mid-seventeenth century) - Monkeys playing cards and drinking
David Teniers the Younger made a series of paintings of this subject highlighting the grotesque animality of vices, particularly tobacco use. Marcy Norton’s Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World uses a different painting in the series to make an interesting argument for the carnivalesque functions of tobacco consumption for seventeenth century Europeans.
