This thick, coarsely beaten copper plate was very probably intended as a wine merchant’s signboard.7 There are metal eyes on the top and on one side to which it could be attached to a support with hooks or rope. Both its faces are painted. One shows a soldier and a civilian with their dog on a quay as they watch the delivery and coopering of wine barrels. On the other the two figures reappear in an interior which is identified as a wine merchant’s by the barrels in the foreground and background. The soldier sits slumped in a chair with the dog at his feet while his companion is holding a prunted glass up to the light, probably in order to check the clarity of the wine. The scenes are coarsely painted. The sky is broadly brushed and the figures are hardly worked up at all. They were probably intended to be seen from a distance. One of the barrels was apparently inscribed ‘cuyp’ originally,8 and it is on that basis that the signboard was attributed to Aelbert Cuyp. However, no signature was found during the last technical examination. It may have been a fake that was removed when the picture was restored, but that is not documented. In any event, there are no compelling reasons to assume that this is a work by Cuyp.9 The figures are vaguely reminiscent of his paintings, where the combination of a soldier and a civilian is often found, but here they are more coarsely executed than usual.10 It is not completely beyond the bounds of possibility that this was some sort of commission, but the sky, especially, with its seemingly stencilled clouds, is really very uncharacteristic of Cuyp.11 For the time being it therefore seems reasonable to speak of an anonymous artist who was active around the middle of the seventeenth century, judging by the figures’ dress. Erlend de Groot, 2022 See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements