The lute player

Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi da (1571-1610)


Item type:
painting
Date of creation:
ca. 1595
Height:
94.0 cm  (37 in.)
Width:
119.0 cm  (46 7/8 in.)
Technique / Medium:
oil on canvas

    Item location

  • Gosudarstvennyĭ Ėrmitazh (State Hermitage Museum | Государственный Эрмитаж)
    [Museum inv. no.: ГЭ-45]

Description

A musician plays the lute while gazing at the viewer, and a violin and books of music by Jacques Arcadelt are on the table in the foreground.

Instruments [MIMO Code] (notes)

Lute [3394]
Violin [3573]

Musical works

Arcadelt, Jacques -- Voi sapete ch’io v’amo anzi, from Primo libri di madrigalilegible music notation
Portions of two or more madrigals visible, including the text "Vous savez que je vous aime et vous adore" (a French translation of Arcadelt's madrigal Voi sapete ch’io v’amo anzi).

Image URLs

image link 1
Wikipedia article on the three versions of this work by Caravaggio
image link 2
Wikipedia image of the Hermitage version
image link 3
Hermitage Museum image

Bibliographic references

Garrison, Karen. "The artistic flute in the early Baroque period", Flute talk 32/8 (April 2013) 22.

Christiansen, Keith. A Caravaggio rediscovered: The lute player (New York, NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1990) RILM 1999-35113.

RIdIM record id

3194