The Frans Hals exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was an interesting exhibit full of middle-class, colorful, jubilant portraits of people from 16th – 17th century Dutch New Netherlands, today New York. Afterward, I felt in a very Egyptian mood, so I ventured down a floor to the Egyptian art from the 1st – 4th centuries CE. You may ask: how in the world are they and Hals’s work related? The answer: They’re not! They are two completely separate worlds of art (no wonder the exhibits are on different floors). Much of the Egyptian art was sculptures and other crafted objects (including mummies!), as well as fabulous jewelry pieces, whereas Hals was an exclusive painter. Amongst the Egyptian paintings, the Egyptian art was much older, of course, and not as fresh-looking as Hals. The Egyptians also didn’t have modern paint that Hals had, helping to contribute to the joy and frivolity evident in some of Hals’s paintings (e.g. “Yonker Man and his Sweetheart”, where the Yonker man is drinking with his girlfriend and everyone is happy). Hals’s paintings had a 3D kind of look to them, whereas the Egyptian paintings were very much 2D and were not as full and detailed as Hals’s paintings. The mouths of all Egyptian paintings were closed, whereas Hals had a lot of his people with open mouths. The Egyptians tended to paint gods and goddesses, whereas Hals painted middle class, ordinary people almost exclusively.