# Guardroom with Monkeys [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [TENIERS, David the Younger]() - Date: 1651-1700 - Technique: Oil on panel, 41 x 58 cm ## Commentary In a large, open, barn-like structure, which serves as a guardroom, groups of monkeys wearing soldiers' uniforms are grouped around tables playing cards and back-gammon. Pictures of monkeys had been popular from the sixteenth-century and it was Teniers who developed the theme in the seventeenth-century. The primary role of the monkey in visual and literary sources of the sixteenth-century was to represent the irrational and foolish side of man's nature, but monkeys also were symbols of sinfulness and seen as devils. ## Related artworks - [A Barn Interior]() - [A Cobbler in his Workshop]() - [A View of Het Sterckshof near Antwerp]() - [Apes in the Kitchen]() - [Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his Gallery]() - [Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria in his Gallery]() - [Before the Inn]() - [Card Players]() - [Country Kermis]() - [Countryside Inn with Revellers \(detail\)]() - [Countryside Inn with Revellers]() - [Dulle Griet \(Mad Meg\)]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()