# Officers and Standard-Bearers of the Old Civic Guard [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [EVERDINGEN, Caesar van]() - Date: 1651-1700 - Technique: Oil on canvas, 201 x 350 cm ## Commentary Alkmaar, like other Dutch towns, had militias of civilians who formed companies of armed guards. An like their counterparts elsewhere, they often decorated their meeting halls with group portraits of their members. Everdingen executed his group portrait for the Alkmaar Guard. He applied his classicist principles successfully in this traditional type of painting. He arranged the heads of the figures in a zigzag horizontal line. He had every second man take a step forward so as to leave space between them and avoid overlapping. ## Related artworks - [Allegory of the Birth of Frederik Hendrik]() - [Amor Holding a Glass Orb]() - [Bacchus with Nymphs and Cupid]() - [Count Willem II of Holland Granting Privileges]() - [Diogenes Seeks a True Man]() - [Four Muses and Pegasus on Parnassus]() - [Holy Family]() - [Jupiter and Callisto]() - [Lycurgus Demonstrates the Benefits of Education]() - [Nymphs Offering the Young Bacchus Wine, Fruit and Flowers]() - [Portrait of a Girl as a Huntress]() - [Portrait of a Two-Year-Old Boy]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()