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When Nicolaes Vondel made known his intent to hire an assistant, all of Kleine Virrserijstraat should have gone abuzz with it. Painters should have gossiped like old women -- particularly the youngest de Bloot across the way, whose successes in procreation and investment balanced the blandness of his brush and let him think himself perceptive. But then it hardly took brains to know that invitations to Vondel's studio were normally reserved for his patrons: prim lawyers, modest industrialists, landless patricians upon sudden notions of frugality. And even they rarely accepted the privilege, hating to trip along the meat-market topping the Virrserijstraats (the Grosse tapered sausage-like to the Kleine) and preferring to send runners after their canvasses.

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