Girl with a flute

Bijlert, Jan van (born ca. 1597, died 1671)

Item type:

painting

Date of creation:

ca. 1630

Height:

108.0 cm  (42 1/2 in.)

Width:

85.8 cm  (33 3/4 in.)

Technique / Medium:

oil on canvas

Description

From the museum website: A Dutch painter working wholly within the tradition of Caravaggio, van Bijlert favoured such low-life settings as taverns, hostelries and brothels for his human and still-life subjects. Most of his pictures, in the fashion of the time, come supplied with an allegorical or moralistic overlay. 'Girl with a flute' is a good example, dressing up seventeenth-century erotica as a personification of Music. The woman is either promiscuous or a prostitute: her beckoning smile and partially exposed breast are contrivances of seduction, both painterly and sexual. Displayed in a candle-lit interior, this painted coquette would have quickened as well as embodied the pulse of life. The Pushkin Museum owns a companion to van Bijlert's picture: a man plucking a lute.

Instruments [MIMO Code] (notes)

Recorder [4039]

Musical works

legible music notation

RIdIM images

Image URLs

image link 1
image link 3

RIdIM record id

3568