Musical Scene
Gerrit van Honthorst
1625–1655
- Medium
- black ink wash over pen and brown ink and black chalk over graphite on gray-brown paper with white heightening, incised
- Dimensions
- Support: 23.3 x 26.8 x 0.3 cm (9 3/16 x 10 9/16 x 1/8 in.); Image: 17.3 x 20.2 cm (6 13/16 x 7 15/16 in.)
- Genre
- Drawings
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art
Styles
Tags
netherlands
About
The Utrecht artist Gerrit van Honthorst was internationally known as a portrait painter, but he also gained a reputation as a painter of raucous musical scenes and parties. This drawing was once part of an album of compositional types that the artist showed to prospective patrons. Though the cheerful theme of a man and a woman sharing a song seems innocent, such unions often had amorous or lascivious connotations in 17th-century Holland.
