Festive Company in a Renaissance Room

In 1628 two specialists shared this panel. Dirck van Delen, a painter of architecture still in his early twenties, built the room, with its classical pilasters and portals. Dirck Hals, the younger brother of Frans Hals, then painted in the people. The two worked together on a number of pictures in this way, one supplying the setting and the other the company. The guests here wear the latest fashions and are eating, drinking and flirting. At more than one and a half metres wide, the panel is much larger than the small pictures of parties that Dirck Hals usually made on his own. On the left, two men are playing backgammon, a popular game of chance, which the museum reads as a hint to the whole gathering that anything can happen.