Fair with Merlon-Crowned Keep

The title names the one thing in this picture that stands still, a square medieval tower topped with merlons, the notched battlements of an old castle keep. It rises between newer buildings with rows of regular windows, and around its foot a whole town seems to have turned out for the fair. There are riders, carts, a tent, market women with baskets of vegetables. Further back the stalls run on towards open country and a line of hills. Franz de Paula Ferg painted it in oil on a sheet of copper, a hard, smooth support that keeps tiny brushstrokes crisp, and at about 58 by 80 centimetres that is a big sheet of copper to paint on. In the lower left corner a boy runs with his arms up beside a small dog. The museum dates the picture only as before 1724.