Jar with a Woman and Geese

Vividly painted in blue, yellow, green, and ocher on a white ground, this jar depicts an aged woman in modest garb holding a distaff (a tool for spinning wool into thread) and gesturing with both hands. On a grassy field beside her are several squabbling geese. Ocher rays emanate from the upper right corner of the scene towards the woman’s raised hand.The precise meaning of this iconography has not been identified. As a tool of domestic labor, the distaff could be the sign of an industrious wife. However, in some contemporary artworks, it was used as a symbol of domestic unhappiness. And in other artworks and some literature in this period, the act of spinning was a euphemism for sexual activity. Similarly, geese were sometimes linked to human sin or ignorance. It is likely that the jar’s composition had a moral significance.This piece belongs to a set of over twenty jars decorated with various subjects including biblical, genre, allegorical, and erotic images, all painted on the back with an initial B or a B topped by an O. These initials may refer to the jar's maker or to the pharmacy for which it was made. Another jar in the museum’s collection, depicting a ragged man leaning on a crutch, also bears this monogram and must have come from the same set.