Extra Credit

The painting Soldiers playing Cards and Dice (The Cheats) by Valentin de Boulogne is in the same room as Saint Sebastian by Tanzio Da Varallo and The Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew by Juesepe De Ribera.  All three paintings have lights shining from above, as if it’s coming from the heavens.  Also, through the color choice, you can tell that the paintings are from the same period.  Five people are in Soldiers, four are in Bartholomew and three are in Sebastian.

The most important part of the paintings are the eyes.  Their eyes clearly have religious intention.  The Da Varallo and De Ribera paintings depict the figures, in the paintings, staring at the skies and the heavens.  Obviously these figures are supposed to represent good.  The Boulogne painting on the other hand shows every person looking down as if they are looking down into Hell.  This was a common way, from paintings in this era, to depict money as an evil.  My painting that I chose for the earlier essay, The Moneylender and His Wife, depicted a similar thing: money is an evil that threatens religion.

In the painting by de Boulogne, two men are playing cards, two men are playing dice and one man is observing the card game.  The four men that are playing the games are only immersed in themselves and their activity, while the observer is immersed in the card game.