Banquet of Members of the Haarlem Calivermen Civic Guard

In 1583 – at the age of twenty-one – Cornelis van Haarlem painted a company of the Haarlem Calivermen’s civic guard. It was the first militia portrait ever painted in Haarlem. The guardsmen are grouped around a table laid for a meal. They are all in motion; some gesticulate, or lay a hand on someone’s shoulder, one man looks into his tankard, another holds one aloft. Cornelis created great cohesion by linking the guardsmen literally; each one of them is touching another. The lively, informal way Cornelis portrayed them was unique for the time.
Cornelis himself belonged to the civic guard and was a member of the company portrayed here, so he is in the picture too. He is the man wearing a hat at the far left of the painting, looking out at us. He has been identified from a self-portrait he painted some five years later, and sits beside his teacher, the artist Pieter Pietersz. Cornelis also included a younger brother, the young man bottom left.