The theme of morra players with a Roman background like the painting above, is one that Constantin Hansen returned to multiple times throughout his career (see photos right). Morra was a hand game dating back to ancient Roman and Greek times. Each player simultaneously reveals their hand, extending any number of fingers, and calls out a number. Any player who successfully guesses the total number of fingers revealed by all players combined scores a point. Morra was played to decide issues, much as two people might flip a coin, or simply for entertainment.

​

     Constantin Hansen was a visual artist and a central figure in the "Golden Age of Danish Painting" in the early and mid 19th century. He was born in 1804 in Rome and baptized in Vienna, where he was named after his godmother, Constance Nissen, who was the widow of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. As a child, he was influenced by his father's attitude to the painter's tasks and vocations, and at that time he taught his son to draw.
    At the age of 12 he was admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts building school to study architecture, but changed his course of study to painting at the age of 21. These first years became the basis for his logical compositions and well-defined spatial reproduction. He painted several portraits under the impression of his father and his great role model, the artist Jens Juel. From 1825−1827 he developed an independent sense of the interplay of form and color.
    He began his training under Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg in 1828, and the master's influence can be immediately read from the artists architectural paintings. In 1835 he received a two-year stipend to travel abroad, which was followed by an additional year's stipend. His travels took him to Berlin, Dresden, Prague, Nuremberg and Munich on his way to Italy, where he traveled extensively and stayed longer periods in Rome, Naples and Pompeii. In Italy he met fellow Dane, the prominent sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen. He traveled with other Danish artists, including Jørgen Roed, Christen Købke and decorative painter Georg Hilker.
    He had a great understanding of the architectural qualities, the light and the southern atmosphere and emphasized the historical perspective by emphasizing the proximity of antiquity in the contemporary Italian everyday life. In 1837 he painted his most notable work, an interior scene, "A group of Danish artists in Rome." The motif represents several genres, both the group and friendship portrait and a figure composition, which currently hangs in the National Gallery of Denmark.
    Later in Pæstum, he painted some studies that point to the outdoor painting in the late 19th century. During his stay in Naples, he experienced the tanned fisherman boys as living examples of ancient sculptures, and he prepared his most ambitious composition to date, "Scene from the Molo near Naples."
    In 1843 Hansen and the artist Georg Hilker were approved for a commission to create frescos to decorate the foyer at the University of Copenhagen. They created the most complete al fresco decoration in the Nordic countries of that era, both in terms of content and form.
    Hansen was versatile and as such the heir of Nicolai Abildgaard's neoclassical ideals, but he also cultivated the unpretentious motifs of the home.
    In 1854 he was named professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, yet only became member of the Academy later in 1864.

     The artist is represented in these public institutions:

• The Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge

• The Metropolitan Museum of Art

• The British Museum

• The Louvre in Paris

• The Finnish National Gallery

• Nationamuseum in Stockholm

• Funen Art Museum

• Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen

• Akademiraadet (The Royal Academy of Fine Arts)

• AROS - Aarhus Art Museum

• BRANDTS - Museum of Art & Visual Culture

• The Hirschsprung Collection

• Fuglsang Art Museum

• Horsens Art Museum

• J.F. Willumsen's Museum

• ARTS Museum of Modern Art Aalborg

• Copenhagen City Museum

• KØS Museum of Art in the Public Space

• The Museum at Koldinghus

• Museum Jorn

• Museum Sønderjylland (Brundlund Castle Art Museum)

• Nivaagaards Malerisamling

• New Carlsberg Glyptotek

• Ordrupgaard Museum 

• Randers Art Museum

• Ribe Art Museum

• Rudersdal Museums

• Skagens Museum

• Skovgaard Museum

• Sorø Art Museum

• National Gallery of Denmark

• Thorvaldsens Museum

• Vejlemuseerne (The Guide) Museums of Art

​