Silhouetted against a white background, two men stand on a checkered terrace floor. Behind them is a low balustrade. They adopt reciprocal positions and each shoulders a rifle. They wear broad brimmed black hats decorated with feathers. harem trousers, and short jackets. The man on the right is in red and brown with a sash across his chest. In his left hand he holds a rifle rest. His partner, dressed completely in blue, wears a cartridge bandolier over his chest and holds a taper to light a charge. They are flanked by red pilasters that support a narrow red lintel. Below them, their coats of arms flank the dedication inscription. Above them is the scene of the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard. On the right, in the midst of a low enclosure, a group of men labor to break the soil. On the left two workers, carrying their implements, approach the vineyard owner who stands in a doorway.

The execution of the panel does not appear to be by the hand of a sophisticated painter. Stoll is holding a musket with his right hand but it appears to cross the back of his neck to emerge over his left shoulder. The variation noted under condition suggests that the artist may have an imperfect understanding of his materials, especially firing time for paint and for silver stain.

The representation of two Swiss men in parade dress carrying their weapons was a standard pose for a country with a civilian military. Each male was required to be armed and ready to respond to a call to arms. They wear puffy bloomers, swords at their waists, and a powder charge belt across their chests. Given the size of the gun stock, they carry arquebuses, a precursor of the musket. Stoll holds a musket rest in his left hand and Schwarz (Schwartz) appears to have a chord used to ignite the charge, a gesture of reciprocity. Stoll was clerk (Weibel) of Warth in the canton of Thurgau. Warth belonged to the Carthusian monastery of Ittingen until 1798 (see https://vitrosearch.ch/de/buildings/2653423). Buch near Frauenfeld, where Schwarz (Schwartz) came from, also belonged to Ittingen. Perhaps these two men felt a need to demonstrate a solidarity that was not tied to the traditional ties of family.

The narrative panel at the top refers to the Parable of the Labors in the Vineyard (Matthew 20: 1–16). To the left is at the door of a house where a man appears to address two laborers who carry their farming implements with them. On the right, a group of men are still working in a field. The owner hired the laborers at different times during the day but at the end, they all received the same wages. The parable is an oft-cited lesson on the boundless love of God, who welcomes all with the same generosity. Thus, the image serves as a reflection of the professed generosity between the two men. See for precedent, the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard, from the heraldic panel with the arms of Ulrich Reber (SZ_17; also known as Räber, artist unidentified, 1572, Reding-Haus collection). The parable as well as the central scene of the great cluster of grapes brought back from Canaan by the Israelite spies (Numbers 13:23), are plays on Ulrich’s name, Reber, referring to a variety of grapes.

Cited in:
Hayward, Kummer-Rothenhäusler, & Raguin, 1987, p. 68.
Hayward, Kummer-Rothenhäusler, & Raguin, 1989, p. 312.