Het zieke kind

The painting measures 32.2 cm × 27.2 cm (12.7 in × 10.7 in). The composition resembles a Pietà: a mother is cradling her listless child, probably a girl, on her lap, recalling religious works depicting the Virgin Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus. The positions of the mother and the child create diagonals crossing near the mother's heart. The child gazes out vacantly past the viewer and into the distance, with her mother leaning over her attentively. The mother's bright red skirt and blue apron, and the child's yellow and white clothes, contrast with the otherwise muted tones of the room. A pot with a spoon lies unheeded on a table to the left, with the child too lethargic to eat. To the right, some clothes lie on a chair. Hanging on the wall is a map of Europe, which bears the artist's signature "G. Metsue", and a drawing of Christ on the cross, echoing the suffering in the room.

It is possible that Metsu's wife Isabella was the model for the mother in the painting: the woman wears the cap of a married woman and a wedding ring, and the earrings are seen in earlier portraits of Isabella (c.1658). The child may be theirs, although none is recorded, or possibly the child of Metsu's patron Jan Jacobszoon Hinlopen, whose family Metsu had painted in 1661 and 1663 (see Metsu's Portrait of the Family Hinlopen): Hinlopen's daughter Geertruit died of measles aged 19 months in August 1663.