Children Playing with a Goat

Children Playing with a Goat is an 18th-century grisaille painting in the style of Jacob de Wit, known as a "witje". It is an oil painting on canvas depicting a relief of children playing with a goat after a relief by Francois Duquesnoy. It is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Description
Several paintings of this specific scene dating from the 17th century and 18th century have survived, and sometimes these were incorporated into other paintings. Though the paintings themselves have survived, the interpretation has not. In general, the popularity of putti in "witjes" as overdoors or room panels had to do with a trompe-l'œil effect when the viewer walks into a room. Stucco work as a decorative scheme was quite popular in the Netherlands from the late 17th century throughout the 18th century, but these imitation-stucco paintings were valued for their cleverness, their clarity even on a cloudy day without shadows, and of course the ease with which they could be moved and reinstalled, an aspect which has made them also difficult to trace. In fact, the genre itself existed well before De Wit was active and they were just called "grauwtjes" (little grays, or grisailles), and through De Wit's art they slowly became known as "witjes" (little whites). The shadows in the painting are supposed to be aligned with the light source, so in this case, the painting was probably an overdoor with a window on the left. The painter Jacob de Wit excelled at this "painting of putti in a bas-relief" style of grisaille, and though no original autograph version of this specific scene is known, the art historian Hessel Miedema discovered two "grauwtjes" by De Wit after reliefs by Duquesnoy in the estate sale of Lambert ten Kate. According to Walter Liedtke, a comparison of this painting with autograph "witjes", however, shows that it is not as masterful as an actual Jacob de Wit.

Putti with a Goat theme
The subject remained popular through the 19th century, when it was used by the sculptor P.E. van den Bossche for a sculpted frieze above the doors of a building on the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam.