Companhia alegre

Around 1620 the young Dutch Republic was newly rich, and a fashion arrived with the money, paintings of well-dressed young people idling, drinking, and flirting. Buytewech was one of the first to specialise in them, so much so that friends called him Spirited Willem. At first glance this is just an elegant party, the costumes laid down in the bright, slightly showy colours of the moment. But viewers then read the objects around the room as warnings about wasting youth and wealth, and the poised older woman entertaining the young men would have been understood as a figure of worldly temptation. Buytewech died young, only about 32, and left just a handful of paintings behind.