A young girl forbids a boy to pick at the fruit. An ordinary everyday scene, it would appear, but there is more to it than that. The way the boy holds the bunch of grapes by the stalk derives from Jacob Cats’s emblem books. In the explanatory text Cats tells us that grapes and virginity are equally fragile, and thus a bunch of grapes should only be held by the stalk. Moreover a woman can only preserve her chastity in marriage. In this light the picture takes on an entirely different meaning. With her raised finger the young girl is cautioning the boy not to make advances. She has no intention of losing her virginity. This highly accomplished genre piece with its colouristic beauty, exquisite rendering of texture and play of light is in the tradition of the Leiden fijnschilders, although the palette is somewhat lighter. The niche and the raised curtain form the compositional frame within which the scene is enacted as in a play.