Soldiers Playing Cards and Dice (The Cheats)

Valentin de Boulogne

National Gallery of Art

Five pale-skinned men gather around a rectangular table playing cards and dice against a dark, smoke-gray background in this horizontal painting. Light illuminates the scene dramatically from the upper left, creating bright areas and deep shadows. The two men closest to us play cards. One sits on our side of the table and faces our left in profile, wearing a gleaming, dark, armored breastplate and sleeves over scarlet-red tights. He has a dark brown beard and short, dark hair. He holds his stacked playing cards close to his chest, and he pulls the front one up with a forefinger and thumb as he looks at the man across from him. The young man near the left edge of the composition faces our right, almost in profile, as he half-kneels on his seat. He leans over the table, propped on one elbow. His other hand, closer to us, brushes the underside of his chin as he looks down at his cards. His right cheek and ear are brightly lit and much of the rest of his face cast into dark shadow, though there is a faint suggestion of a goatee around his parted lips. He wears a floppy, feathered cap, a bronze-brown shirt with full sleeves, and dark breeches over gray stockings. A bearded man with a tanned complexion stands behind the young man to our left. He looks toward the other end of the table at the dice players, and holds up a hand with two fingers extended. He wears a pointed metal helmet and holds a tall wooden staff with his other hand, along the left side of the canvas. Wrinkles line his forehead and create creases around his open mouth. Opposite us, two men look down at two small dice on the table. One man stands at the short end of the table to our right, with his right fingertips resting on the table over the dice. He wears a floppy, feathered cap over dark hair, and his brown beard is trimmed. His dark eyebrows are lowered and he has a long, straight nose. His ivory-white shirt has vertical black stripes and shimmers in the light. A metal collar, a piece of armor, rests around his neck and his hips are wrapped in a charcoal-gray cloth before being lost in the shadows under the table. In front of him, seen between the two card players, the fifth man faces the other dice player, leaning with his right hand on the table and holding up his other hand, palm out and fingers outstretched. His shoulder is bare where his cream-colored shirt has slipped down, and he wears a ruby-red, slashed, floppy hat. The light illuminates the back of his shoulder and side of his face, and the rest of his face is shrouded in shadow but we can see his mouth is open.