Willem van Heythuysen posant avec une épée

In 1625 a rich Haarlem cloth merchant named Willem van Heythuysen had Frans Hals paint him at full length, life-size, and standing, which almost nobody outside royalty and nobility got to do at the time. Van Heythuysen wasn't nobility. He plants himself against a grand column and drapery, one hand on his hip, and bends a long thin rapier under his other hand as if it might snap, striking a pose of aristocratic swagger a merchant had no birthright to. Look down and there are roses scattered on the floor, the old reminder that all this fades. A fellow Haarlem painter, Judith Leyster, made her own small copy of it but swapped the sword for a walking stick, which lets the air out of the pose on purpose.