A Guard Room 

David Teniers the Younger painted ‘A Guard Room’ in the mid-17th century, likely in his native Flanders, now part of Belgium, using oil on canvas. Paintings of guardrooms became popular in the Netherlands during the 1600s, during a period of frequent military conflict. In this canvas, the artist uses discarded military equipment to remind the viewer of both the glory and the costs of war. But there's something more going on here. Teniers was more than just a painter, he was also the curator of the art collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm. His awareness of the politics of display may have led him to play with the idea of an artwork being displayed in a guardroom as discarded objects of war. Art historians can piece together the cultural meanings of paintings like these through archival research into both the lives of artists and the social context of their works. This approach helps us to understand how social institutions shape artistic expression.