# Twin Birth Celebration [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [STEEN, Jan]() - Date: 1651-1700 - Technique: Oil on canvas, 69 x 79 cm ## Commentary Even the ritual of the lying-in visit, associated with childbirth, was not spared Steen's parodying brush. In the Twin Birth Celebration he depicts a hilarious and witty scene of a flustered elderly father who is mocked by a throng of clamorous women as he receives his newborn twins. Steen's old man must be impotent — since common wisdom held that the aged were infertile — and therefore completely incapable of having sired one infant, let alone two. A younger, virile man must have fathered them as the old fool, much to his consternation, has suddenly realized. ## Related artworks - [A Burgher of Delft and His Daughter]() - [A Merry Party \(detail\)]() - [A Merry Party \(detail\)]() - [A Merry Party]() - [Argument over a Card Game]() - [Arrival of a Visitor]() - ['As the Old Sing, So Pipe the Young' \(detail\)]() - ['As the Old Sing, So Pipe the Young']() - [Baptism \("So de oude songen, so pypen de jongen"\)]() - [Before an Inn]() - [Celebrating the Birth]() - [Christ among the Doctors]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()