Were militia portraits in the seventeenth century always intended to benefit one’s career and network? Did you invariably have be depicted as confident and proud, do you think? Then you should pay a visit to the Stedelijk Museum in Alkmaar. A militia portrait hangs there which does exactly the opposite of what all those other portraits do; it does not try to impress us at all. It is a curious work. Claes van der Heck painted it in 1613, and he portrays the officers of the Oude Schutterij in Alkmaar, one of the most influential cities in the Netherlands, in a landscape. It seems as if they are having a picnic in the forest! It almost looks like a company outing, complete with awkward, forced poses.

Why is no one wearing a uniform? The men do wear those famous white collars, but the squatting and kneeling on the dirty tree stumps certainly makes the image comical, especially because of the immaculate white collars. The combination is distracting so we are unimpressed by these opulent officers. The viewer's eye is directed to the dunes in the background and to a couple that is gazing toward us. If you look at the picture for a while, you almost start to think the painting was a failure. That, however, is unlikely — Van der Heck was a professional with an excellent clientele. Maybe something else was going on, maybe the commission was unusual — no more power plays or dress to impress. More than anything else, the painting seems to present a group of friends. It is certainly not about ambition, status, or being seen. Perhaps it was not intended to impress the spectator. Not LinkedIn, more a convivial Facebook.