In seventeenth-century Europe, fighting was everywhere. The right to keep and use arms, once restricted to nobility, had become fundamental for both military and civilian men. As a result, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries fighting with bladed weapons became the chief form of aggressive behaviour, especially among younger men. Armed disputes between men could happen at any time, whether spontaneous or formalized in the form of duels. At the same time, instruction in the art of combat, with or without weapons, was provided in the fight books that proliferated throughout the early modern period. These popular books, reprinted and translated throughout Europe, were available to various social groups, from elites to middle-class fraternities and guilds. The practice of fencing was encouraged, even required, among young men of the middle and upper classes as well as the nobility. Most ritualized fighting was in defence of personal honour (including masculine identity) and intended to wound, rather than to kill. While the art of fencing was also taught as a form of deportment and exercise, its chief goal was the most efficient way to disable one's opponent.5

Public life in the northern Netherlands, as elsewhere, would have an undercurrent of potential violence: men had their swords at the ready, schooled in the art of defence. In seventeenth-century Dutch depictions of daily life, where men interact with women in scenes of leisure, there can be found an intriguing detail: a discarded sword. The sword, sometimesaccompanied by a cloak, may appear variously hanging by its baldric (sword belt), from the wall, on the back of a chair, or lying across a table or on the floor. It may appear in scenes of cardplaying, flirtation, eating and drinking, and music-making, and occasionally in portraits of men.

Gabriel Metsu's elegant genre scene known as The Music Party (Fig. 6.1) depicts a woman and two men playing music at a table covered with books and scores. The woman grasps the neck of a lute and, with her other hand, holds up a score for a man standing at the window, who sings and beats time. The other man sits across from them at the table, turned slightly away from as he tunes his viol. Aside from the figures, a complex little still life at the bottom of the picture is an intriguing mix of martial and amorous associations.