Focus on The Feast of Saint Nicholas and explore the Painting in the Dutch Golden Age.
Jan Steen falls in the greater category of the Baroque period in painting. Baroque painting in the Netherlands was different from that in other countries in that it did not have the same idealized finery and magnificent grandeur. Instead, the Dutch style can be identified by its focus on extreme detail and realism, different even from neighboring Flanders and the splendid Flemish baroque paintings. 
Pictorial light: As they strived for extreme realism, Dutch Golden Age painters mastered the art of depicting the quality of light, particularly concentrating on the way that it behaved and reflected on various surfaces. 
Domestic detail: The revolution of oil paints in the 15th century made extreme detail possible in paintings. Dutch genre paintings like the Feast of Saint Nicholas exemplify this attention to detail in order to give an extremely realistic view of each genre scene. For example, the bread basket in the foreground of the painting shows the details of the woven wicker basket and the assorted crackers and nuts in the basket and spilled carelessly on the floor. Also in the basket the shiny outer coating of the bun and each individual seed that is used to garnish it, exemplifies not only the use of detail, but also Steen’s focus on light on various surfaces.
Dutch genre Jan Steen Saint Nicholas Netherlands