DUYSTER, Willem Cornelisz.
(b. 1599, Amsterdam, d. 1635, Amsterdam)

Card-Playing Soldiers

1625-30
Oil on panel, 32 x 43 cm
Staatsgalerie, Schleissheim

In the popular imagination of the seventeenth-century Netherlands, soldiers were associated with a variety of diversions deemed unwholesome for the civilian population. This accounts for innumerable depictions of soldiers gambling as well as for the frequent portrayal of their pursuits involving women, frequently prostitutes.