Abstract

It's often been suggested that paintings of "Cimon and Pero" must have evoked erotic sensation in the beholder of that time and the moral message was merely a pretext. This article tries to prove if it really was the case in seventeenth-century Netherlands. Both virtuous and erotic aspects are inherent in the story itself. Some representations of the theme were used for the promotion of charitable institutes, and some of them have been accused as being an erotic pin-up. Even the strict theologian such as Molanus, however, approved some kinds of paintings that derived from pagan antiquity as "moral images", and it is plausible that "Cimon and Pero" was seen as such. To see the actual situation, inventory documents are consulted. Some documents indicate that the paintings of Cimon and Pero were hung in voorhuys, the room almost public as the first room in which man received every guest. It is likely that Cimon and Pero could have been accepted not as a pretext but as the exemplum of piety at its face value