Joannes I Sadeler (1550-1600), after Judocus Winghe: A House of Ill-Fame, 1588
Engraving, 37,6 x 45,5 cm
Museum Plantin-Moretus/Print room

Here we are confronted with a typical print with a double meaning. It is an erotically charged scene of drunken pairs who are engaged in lechery. Under the print there is a caution: “Wine and women make the wise lapse, and whoever spends time in the company of the lewd, shall be bad.” These moralising prints could however only be afforded by a financially endowed audience, which, although to the outside world they did not indulge in such activity, would nevertheless have been titillated by the scene.