The wine connoisseurs by Jacob Duck
The most telling object in Jacob Duck's 'The Wine Connoisseurs' (1640) is the one that doesn't belong there.
Duck gives us a scene of merchant-class refinement. A man in a feathered hat raises a glass to the light, the period's unmistakable gesture of the wine expert. His companions watch from the shadows. The stacked barrels behind him tell us this isn't a tavern: it's a wholesale cellar, and tasting here is an economic act as much as a social one.
On the floor, among the wine vessels, sits a drum. Duck trained as a goldsmith before turning to paint, and spent years making his name on military genre scenes, soldiers in guardrooms, officers at camp. A drum in a wine cellar is his signature bleeding through. This is a painter who moved into merchant scenes but couldn't leave the barracks behind.
The painting belongs to the Rijksmuseum's collection of Dutch Golden Age genre works. Look closely at the faces in the background, their expressions will tell you whether this connoisseurship is genuine expertise or social theater.
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Transcript
A single glass, held to the light. In 1640, this gesture was the height of connoisseurship. He wears a bicorne with a feather, an officer or merchant. Behind him, stacked barrels signal wholesale trade. The dark arch hides nothing. But look at the floor. A drum sits among the wine vessels. The painter started as a soldier-genre artist and never left it behind. A merchant performing taste, in a room that remembers war.