Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden — Dresden, Saxony, Germany

The original doesn't exist anymore — it was destroyed when Dresden was bombed near the end of the Second World War, so from what I can find, reproductions like this are all that's left of it. Apparently it caused a stir at the time too: painting road workers at the kind of size usually saved for kings and battles wasn't the done thing.

This was made for a church altar rather than a gallery. According to what I found, Pope Julius II was the one who commissioned it — about as prestigious a job as a painter could land back then.

This one apparently started life under a different name — an auction catalogue in 1696 just called it 'a merry company in a room.' It's also one of only three paintings he actually signed and dated, which is a strange thing to bother with for a scene like this one.

He painted this same set-up at least three times, from what I can find, swapping a woman in for one of the men in a later go. There's a story that he looked at the two of them in their old-fashioned German coats and said they were up to demagogic intrigues — supposedly a joke about how that kind of dress had become politically suspect to the authorities at the time.