Jan Tengnagel, Dutch
“Sir, the Good News Is We Just Had a Table for 16 Free Up. The Bad News Is It’s In Our Non-Van Dyke Section,” 1613
Oil on canvas
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Info, or links that point to more info, about this artist can be found here (can be read in full for free on Fridays), here, and here, perhaps in addition to what’s in his Wikipedia page (Google translated Dutch Wikipedia page has more).
/// Matching guardsmen with beards on their chins
all dine nightly in Amsterdam inns.
They place bets for free gins
which no innkeeper wins:
Try to find the identical twins.
/// It is easy to miss at first glance,
but the clean-shaven man has a lance
which got wrapped in a drape.
When he made his escape
it was just by the seat of his pants.
/// In the top row, fourth guard from the right,
pours a drink, but the liquid’s not quite
at a natural slant.
To explain it I can’t.
Things were not “on the level” that night.
/// If I were Tengnagel’s advisor,
I would say “with your words, be a miser.”
On your canvas, each space
can be filled with a face,
but the work’s title can’t be “Officers and other civic guardsmen of the XIth District of Amsterdam, under the command of Captain Geurt Dircksz van Beuningen and Lieutenant Pieter Martensz Hoeffijser.”