A Gentleman Washing His Hands

A lost interior scene, item 5 in the 1696 Dissius sale, described as a picture “in which a gentleman is washing his hands, in a see-through room, with sculptures, artful and rare.” The “see-through” or perspective room suggests an emphatically illusionistic architectural setting, perhaps comparable to the receding spaces of The Love Letter. The hand-washing motif recalls Gerrit ter Borch’s A Woman Washing Her Hands; the two painters were acquainted, having co-signed a Delft document together in 1653.