The Card Players (van Leyden)

Richly dressed men and women crowd a table spread with coins and playing cards, trading glances of suspicion, calculation, and sly amusement - someone, surely, is being cheated. Lucas van Leyden, the Dutch prodigy who took everyday life as a worthy subject decades before it became a Netherlandish specialty, turns a card game into a comedy of human motive read entirely through faces and hands. The intrigue may be amorous as much as financial. His engraved Milkmaid is elsewhere in this collection; here the same eye for ordinary drama works in full color and crowded company.