ハールレムの聖エリザベス病院(グローテ・ハスハイス)の理事たち

In 1641 the governors of Haarlem's hospital for the poor did something the city's charitable boards had not done before. They had themselves painted as a group. Amsterdam's regents had been sitting for portraits like this for years, while Haarlem's went unrecorded. Five men in plain black sit around a table, each appointed for a single year. The secretary Johan van Clarenbeeck holds the book, and the coins laid out in front of François Wouters identify him as the treasurer. A companion picture was commissioned at the same time from another Haarlem painter, Johannes Verspronck, showing the four women who governed the hospital's other board. Hals was about 59 and living a few streets from the hospital itself on the Groot Heiligland. The canvas is still in the frame that was made for it in 1641.