Dirck van Delen

Art historian have proposed both Frans Hals and Hendrick Aerts (who also specialized in architectural paintings) as his presumed masters.

From that year until his death he was registered in Arnemuiden where he sat on the town council, most of the time as burgomaster.

In 1666 he gave to the Antwerp Chamber of rhetoric Olyftack a painting, which he had made in collaboration with the painter Theodoor Boeyermans.

[3] Van Delen's work consists almost entirely of architectural paintings of imaginary palaces and church interiors.

Examples are the A Musical Company in a Renaissance Hall, a collaboration with Pieter Codde (1636, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen) and the Interior with Ladies and Cavalier, with figures copied after Dirck Hals (1629, National Gallery of Ireland).

The buildings he depicted became dominated by pink, white and black marble and were from then on decorated with an excess of sculpture.

[3] The staffage of his works has at times been attributed to other painters, such as Anthonie Palamedesz., Dirck Hals, David Teniers the Younger and Hieronymus Janssens.

[6] There is some doubt about all of these attributions as van Delen lived in relative isolation and it would not have been easy for him to collaborate with these artists.

The composition aims to emphasize this notion that the powers of discernment associated with connoisseurship are socially superior to or more desirable than other forms of knowing.

The presence of children in this type of composition has been explained by the popularity in the Netherlands during the 1660s and 70s of genre scenes showing domestic interiors and ‘ordinary’ people.