Two merchants are sitting with their wares in a kind of courtyard. The men are reminiscent of figures from paintings by the so-called bamboccianti, dutch painters who preferred genre scenes of the lower classes in rome. Toorenvliet's merchants are dressed in wide, knee-length, fur-lined caftans. They wear pointed short leather boots. Leiden, toorenvliet's hometown, was the center of the dutch cloth industry in the first half of the 17th century. Differently patterned fabrics were produced there for the domestic and oriental markets. Toorenvliet's merchants appear european. Since he always painted different carpets in his pictures, these could have been real carpets. Object Type: painting. Date: 1660. Dimensions: height: 49 cm (19.2 in) ; width: 36 cm (14.1 in). Medium: oil on panel. Toorenvliet, Jacob - Two Levant traders in conversation
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