In this work, Hals created an emphatically sensual image. Gypsy – with bare head, loose hair and bold decollete – desperately unlike prudish and dry virtuous matrons, whom we meet

The most significant features of the portrait of the regents are the completed, as it were, final expression in the portrait of the regent, the wealthy warders of the almshouse.

In fact, this portrait is not a portrait: although the young man is often identified as Hamlet, the picture is most likely a traditional for Dutch art allegory “Vanitas”, that