Banquet of Members of the Haarlem Calivermen Civic Guard

Haarlem's civic guards were citizen militias, and in 1583 the city gave a 21-year-old painter his first official commission, a portrait of members of its company of calivermen, named after the light firearm they carried. Cornelis van Haarlem belonged to that company himself. The Frans Hals Museum identifies him as the man in the hat at the top left, with his first teacher, the painter Pieter Pietersz, bearded beside him. He knew these men, and he painted them talking across the table, clapping a shoulder, turning to a neighbour, at a time when group portraits usually lined their sitters up in formal rows. A furled banner cuts across the whole panel on a diagonal. It is the earliest known portrait of a Haarlem civic guard company, and it has since been restored after centuries of damage to its wooden boards.