Masterpiece Story: The Sentry by Carel Fabritius

Who Was Carel Fabritius?

Carel Fabritius was born in the winter of 1622 in Beemster, a muddy village carved out of reclaimed marshlands of northern Holland. His father, Beemster’s first schoolmaster and a part-time painter, inspired Carel and his younger brothers, Barent and Johannes, to become painters.

Fabritius’s early years were marked by both promise and tragedy. At 19, he married and moved to Amsterdam to become an apprentice in Rembrandt’s studio. Many thought him to be Rembrandt’s most promising student. But within two years of his arrival in Amsterdam, his wife died, as did a set of twins and a third child. Heartbroken, he returned to his parents’ home in Beemster.

Seven years later, he married a widow and moved with her to her hometown of Delft. He joined the Guild of St. Luke, became one of its headmen, and, in the next four years, created his most masterful works.

But that career was to be short-lived. On October 12, 1654, an arsenal holding 80,000 pounds of gunpowder erupted in a devastating blast—De Delftse donderslag (“The Delft Thunderclap”). The explosion was heard a hundred miles away and leveled a quarter of Delft, killing hundreds. Among them was Carel Fabritius, buried beneath the rubble of his collapsed studio across the lane from the explosion—dead at age 32.

The Sentry

One of Fabritius’ most enigmatic paintings is known as The Sentry. It is seen by relatively few people each year, as it is in a museum in Schwerin, the least populous of all the German state capitals, with fewer than 100,000 people. It is well off the beaten track for most museum-goers.

The painting’s title suggests that the man in the painting is supposed to be guarding something, but he seems to have dozed off on a low wooden bench, legs akimbo, knee exposed, his musket resting carelessly across his lap, and his bandolier slipping from his shoulder. His gleaming helmet seems to be the only well-kept part of his uniform, in stark contrast to his otherwise disheveled state. Above him, grapevines spill from a planter box—perhaps a subtle clue that a bit of wine has been involved in the story.

But what, exactly, is this sentry supposed to be guarding? The more we examine the scene, the stranger it becomes. The walls behind the man are worn and patched with layers of plaster and whitewash, hinting at years of neglect. There is little activity in the scene. Even the dog finds nothing of interest. The presence of a guard seems unwarranted.

The Column

The column at the center of the painting seems to serve no purpose other than as a display board for a few paper placards. It does not support anything overhead.

Moss and weeds sprout from the top of the column, silent witnesses to decades of abandonment. Whatever purpose it once served is long in the past.

The Archway

The archway beyond the pillar seems poorly designed: the radius of the side near the column differs from that of the other side. The purpose of the archway is a mystery. Rather than serving as a passage between spaces, it seems to lead nowhere. A wall stands too close on the other side, blocking any potential walkway. Like the sentry himself, the arch appears to serve no real function.

Above the arch, a bas-relief carving depicts the lower half of a man, a large rosary, and a pig—likely representing St. Anthony of Egypt.

The connection between St. Anthony and pigs has been explained in various ways. One theory traces it back to a special license granted to his followers, allowing them to raise pigs for their fat, which was used in treating skin disorders. But what St. Anthony and his pig have to do with the fellow on the bench is unclear.

The Other Man

Beyond the archway, standing on the embankment, is another man—or more accurately, the lower half of a man. Who is he, and what is he doing here?

He appears to be a soldier in uniform, his back turned to us as he faces the building beyond the scene. He may be holding a sword or a cane in his hand—an ambiguous detail that only deepens the mystery. The sloping roof of the building behind him suggests a home rather than the more official-looking structures in the rest of the painting. Could he be a fellow soldier, returning home from battle?

Perspective

Behind the sleeping watchman, a stairway emerges from nowhere and leads to nowhere, reminiscent of an Escher drawing—though Fabritius painted it three centuries before Escher’s time. Inconsistencies in the painting’s perspective are just as striking. The shadows of the dog, the man, and the archway all fall in different directions, as if cast at different times of day. The bench on which the sentry sits doesn’t align properly on both sides, much like a skewed tabletop in a Cézanne still life.

These are not the mistakes of an unskilled painter. Fabritius was a master of perspective, celebrated in his lifetime for his technical brilliance. Such apparent “errors” must be intentional. What, then, is the point Fabritius is trying to make with this hodgepodge of architecture and the inconsistencies of perspective? Perhaps he is suggesting that this place is not as essential a building as it might first appear to be. It is certainly not worthy of a sentry.

Of course, Fabritius did not give this painting this name, if he named it at all. In the 18th and 19th centuries, it was often called A Soldier and His Dog or similar titles. The name The Sentry only gained popularity in the late 19th or early 20th century, though exactly when that title was first used is not certain. Whoever named it likely sought to frame the painting’s narrative within the context of the Dutch Golden Age.

But they got it wrong.

A Painting of a Battle-Weary Soldier

When Fabritius painted this scene, the Dutch were a nation at war. The Eighty Years’ War had just ended, yet conflict persisted—against the British and the Portuguese in separate wars at home, and in battles in the Americas and along shipping routes in Asia. The streets of Holland must have been dotted with soldiers like this one, men drained by battle. But Fabritius did not paint a hero; he captured a man utterly spent, slumped in exhaustion after returning home from battle.

This man is no sentry. He stands guard over nothing, protects no stronghold. He is simply a soldier, worn down by war, slumped on a bench before an unremarkable building in an unnamed land. He is not a specific individual but an embodiment of every exhausted soldier who has ever returned home from battle: an Everyman of war.

None of the figures in this painting reveal their faces. His helmet and disheveled hair obscure the soldier’s identity. The bas-relief of St. Anthony above the archway is truncated. The face of the other soldier beyond the arch is unseen, only his lower body visible. These faces are hidden with intention. Soldiers returning from war can be nameless and faceless. We don’t know them as individuals but as a class: symbols of duty and sacrifice.

With this painting, Carel Fabritius captures a battle-weary soldier, finally getting a moment of rest in front of an architectural hodgepodge, wondering as many soldiers have throughout history: “What, exactly, was I fighting to protect?”