# The Guardhouse

- By: David Teniers the Younger (Flemish, 1610-1690)
- Date: c. 1645
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Classification: Painting
- Dimensions: 72.6 × 55.4 cm (28 9/16 × 21 13/16 in.); Framed: 87 × 69.9 × 5.1 cm (34 1/4 × 27 1/2 × 2 in.)
- Culture: Flanders
- Credit line: Charles L. Hutchinson Collection
- Museum: [Art Institute of Chicago](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/867)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/18adfd19-6c76-989e-36ae-1343aa15701b/full/!1719,1080/0/default.jpg
- Who can see it: Teens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

The versatile Flemish painter David Teniers turned to military paraphernalia as the subject of his still lifes in the mid-1640s, as the long conflict of the Thirty Years’ War was drawing to a close. Here soldiers play cards in the dim interior of a guardhouse, while a page carries the officers’ cloaks. However, the chief subject of the work is the pile of discarded armor, weaponry, and parade gear—a saddle, musket, powder horn, charging spanner, and gauntlets—in the immediate foreground. In treating armor as a still-life subject, Teniers followed the precedent of Jan Breughel the Elder, whose daughter he had married.

Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0