The Five Senses (pair of paintings) meal; a lutenist is playing and children singing, epitomising hearing, while one young woman strokes a mink in her arms, representing touch, and another is about to eat oysters, representing taste. Details such as the clavichord and other musical instruments on the left relate to hearing, and a monkey is pulling the hair of a Cupid, a form of touch. The room and the hall visible in the right rear display pictures which are also related to the three senses: "The Annunciation" and "Minerva's Visit to Parnassus" (hearing), "The Dentist" (touch), and "The Punishment of Rich Epulon" and "The Wedding
The Five Senses (pair of paintings) The Five Senses (pair of paintings) The Five Senses are a pair of oil paintings made by Jan Brueghel the Elder and others in 1617–18, at the same time as he was working with Peter Paul Rubens on a series of five paintings on the same topic. The originals were lost in a fire in 1731; faithful copies dated to c. 1620 were preserved and are in the Prado Museum in Madrid. Brueghel, like Rubens, was at this time working in Antwerp at the court of Albert VII, Archduke of Austria, and his wife Isabella, governors of the Spanish Netherlands.