Valentin de Boulogne, 'The Four Ages of Man', about 1629

The four stages of human life are represented by figures with objects relating to their age. Childhood holds an empty bird trap, showing his innocence and naivety: he has let the bird escape. Youth plays a lute, symbolising pleasure and desire. Adulthood in armour wears a victor’s laurel wreath and cradles a book. Old Age is positioned next to coins signifying greed, and holds a glass symbolising the fragility of life.

The table and background are plain and mostly in shadow. The strong lighting reveals the facial features of each figure, all but one of whom stare solemnly out of the painting. Adulthood looks down, supporting his head on one arm. Valentin’s skill in conveying texture can be seen in the smooth and gleaming armour, the elderly man’s beard and the flamboyant folds of the lutist’s sleeve. The elderly man’s fur-collared coat and the youth’s costume date from the sixteenth century, suggesting that the figures and objects are allegorical in nature rather than representations of real life.

The Ages of Man was a common subject for paintings during the sixteenth and seventeenth century, but the number of ages varied. The theme had its origin in classical literature: Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Dante’s Inferno acknowledged the stages of human life according to physical growth and eventual decline. A poem on this subject written by Gian Battista Marino (1569–1625) and published in Rome during the early seventeenth century may have been known to Valentin, who painted this work in Italy during the 1620s.

Groups of figures around a table were common in the work of Caravaggio and his northern followers. Valentin was influenced by these artists, and painted many tavern and concert scenes. The Concert by Hendrick ter Brugghen (1588–1629), was painted around the same time as this work and shows huddled figures playing musical instruments around a table. Brugghen painted several scenes of seated men wearing armour, for example Sleeping Mars (Centraal Museum, Utrecht), which is a possible visual source for Valentin’s figure.

The painting was owned by Michel Particelli, seigneur d’Emery (1596–1650) in Paris during the seventeenth century. Throughout the following century it remained in the Orléans collection at the Palais Royal. Following the high-profile dispersal of this collection in 1791, the painting along with other French and Italian pictures was brought to England. On various occasions in the past it has been incorrectly attributed to other artists, such as Titian and Caravaggio.