The Feast of Saint Nicholas

In the pictureIn the middle of a room with a tiled floor, a little girl in a white apron hugs a doll, with a bucket of treats on her arm. On the right, the mother in a white cap opens her arms to welcome her, and the boy beside them laughs, holding a kolf stick. The boy at the far left wipes away tears with the back of his hand, while the girl behind him laughs and holds up a shoe. At the back right, a boy holding a baby points up toward the chimneypiece, and another boy sings with his mouth wide open. A basket at lower left holds bread and treats, and a large cake leans under the table on the right.

BackgroundIn the Netherlands, presents are exchanged on the evening of December 5, the eve of the feast of Saint Nicholas, or Sinterklaas. By custom, children leave their shoes by the fireplace; good children get presents and sweets, and naughty ones get a bundle of switches. The museum explains that the holiday has been kept the same way for hundreds of years, and that the crying boy in the painting is the child who found a switch in his shoe. Jan Steen (about 1626–1679), from Leiden, was a painter who told household commotions like stories, and here he gathered the elements of this holiday into a single picture.

Puzzle tipThe bright colors are concentrated in the lower half of the picture. Start with the girl's white apron and golden skirt, the mother's white cap and purple skirt, the orange chair back on the right and the bread basket at lower left. The faces of the children in white collars are also good reference points. The top is a window with lead cames, a red bed curtain and a dark chimneypiece hood, whose browns and grays look alike, so separate them by the grid of the window and the folds of the curtain. Fill the black-and-white floor tiles last, following the direction of the grout lines. The recommended size is the Hard level, about 100 pieces.