(The Hague 1588–1629 Utrecht)
A lute player,
oil on canvas, 76 x 63.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
probable sale, Sotheby’s, London, 7 December 1927, lot 25 (as Van Honthorst, to Mori);
Henri Albert Vermunt (1891–1969), Hamburg and Rottach-Egern am Tegernsee, acquired between 1927–1954;
by descent to the present owner

Exhibited:
Utrecht, Centraal Museum, Utrecht, Caravaggio and Europe, 15 December 2018 – 24 March 2019

Literature:
B. Nicolson, Hendrick Terbrugghen, London 1958, p. 96, under cat. no. A66;
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Katalog der Staatsgalerie Stuttgart: Alte Meister, Stuttgart 1962, p. 216;
A. Blankert, L. J. Slatkes, Holländische Malerei im neuen Licht. Hendrick ter Burgghen und seine Zeitgenossen, exhibition catalogue, Braunschweig 1986, p. 24, mentioned under cat. no. 24, no. 2 (as another version);
B. Nicolson, The International Caravagg­esque Movement: Lists of Pictures by Caravaggio and His Followers throughout Europe from 1590 to 1650, Oxford 1979, pp. 99–100 (as copy no. 2);
B. Nicolson, Caravaggism in Europe, revised ed., 3 vols., ed. by L, Vertova, Turin 1989, vol. 1, p. 193, under cat. no. 1147;
L. J. Slatkes & W. Franits, The Paintings of Hendrick ter Brugghen 1588–1629: Catalogue Raisonné, Amsterdam/Philadelphia 2007, p. 195, cat. no. R101, (as a copy, location unknown)

We are grateful to Wayne Franits for confirming the attribution of the present painting to Hendrick ter Brugghen after inspection of the original. He dates it to circa 1626. His certificate from 21 June 2022, is available.

The present Lute Player is a significant addition to ter Brugghen’s oeuvre and is described by Franits as the prime of three extant autograph versions of the composition. The close-up, almost life-sized composition, lends the work a realism and immediacy, further enlivened by dramatic lighting effects which pick-out the musician’s ruddy complexion and seem to dance upon the varied flesh tones of his fingers as they pluck the carefully modelled form of the lute. Executed in Utrecht, the present work is contemporaneous with one of ter Brugghen’s most significant paintings, The Concert also painted around 1626 and conserved in the National Gallery, London (inv. no. NG6483). Both exude the influence of earlier related works painted by Caravaggio during the Italian master’s Roman period, such as The Musicians, in the Metropolitan Museum, New York (inv. no. 52.81). The hidden meanings of these musical depictions, as well those by ter Brugghen’s Utrecht Caravaggisti contemporaries Dirck van Baburen (1596–1624) and Gerrit van Honthorst (1592–1656), remain the subject of scholarly debate. However, all three Utrecht painters spent formative sojourns in Rome’s ‘red light district’, Santa Maria del Popolo. There they imbibed Caravaggio’s influence both from the late master’s works in its parish church, and from the painter’s Italian and Northern European followers who lodged in the quarter.

In the Low Countries, Luit was slang for female genitalia, and the instrument was regularly depicted in art as being the attribute of courtesans, while the feathered cap has a similar association with licentiousness, as evidenced by a 1614 poem by Roemer Visscher which describes men who ‘triumphantly place Cupid’s feathered hat on their lecherous heads’. The present painting then has an arresting vivacity, and one can only speculate who the lute player is looking up at, his mouth open in song, and the feather upon his headdress drooping seductively.

Franits further notes the ‘dazzling garments’ as depicted by ter Brugghen in the shimmering blue silk doublet in the present work. These sorts of costumes, according to Franits ‘cannot be identified with contemporary wear’ but may be possibly associated with the ‘Burgundian’ dress worn by chambers of rhetoric, or Rederijkers, as these amateur dramatic societies were known’. As Franits states: ‘regardless of the iconographic and sartorial roots of this fashion, it likely served as a distancing mechanism for viewers perusing the artists’ compelling subject matter’.

Ter Brugghen, long considered one of greatest proponents of the Dutch Gouden Eeuw, trained in Utrecht as a pupil of Abraham Bloemaert (1566–1651). Likely in Rome by 1608, and returning to the Netherlands around 1614, ter Brugghen was a member in Rome of the Bentvueghels. This Bacchanalian society of Northern artists in the Eternal City held Neo-Pagan masses in the Church of Santa Constanza, and scrawled graffiti both there and on the walls of raucous taverns, which seems in keeping with the suggestive and exuberant air of the present picture.

Previously published as a ‘rejected work’ by Franits and L. J. Slatkes, known only from historic reproductions, as one of a number of replicas after ter Brugghen’s presumed prime version of the composition in the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart (see literature), the present picture has now been rightfully restored to ter Brugghen’s oeuvre by Franits after examination in the original. Franits notes the significant pentimenti in the current picture, with ter Brugghen working out his compositional changes directly onto the canvas. X-rays reveal changes to the position of both hands, and particularly to the thumb of the right hand, as if to make the appearance of playing a chord more convincing. The alterations made to the pose of the Lute player in the present picture are repeated, without revision, in the two extant other autograph versions, one in the Koelliker Collection, Milan and the previously mentioned version in the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. The present canvas furthermore shows evidence that it was previously used for a horizontal composition, then scraped and repurposed for the present vertically orientated work. Franits states that the present work ‘was the prototype for all the other pictures. Moreover, these somewhat drastic changes to our painting should be considered highly intentional and purposeful, certainly not of the type that one would find in a mere copy by a workshop pupil. To the contrary they must be tied directly to ter Brugghen himself’. Franits concludes ‘[…] the evidence confirms that our picture was the prime version that generated two additional autograph replicas and a sizeable number of workshop copies’, rendering the present work an outstanding example of Northern Caravaggism.

Technical analysis by Gianluca Poldi:

As IR reflectography and X-rays demonstrate, some small variations occurred during painting. In particular, the changes in the profile of the left border of the lute, the edge of the left sleeve cuff, in some shadows of the blouse, and very probably the position of the right thumb (originally lower) and of some lute keys. It also seems the painter began to paint the left hand a little lower down.

No evident signs of underdrawing are noted, but it is likely there was a form of drawing, perhaps with a chalk or directly with a brush, which could not be identified with diagnostic methodologies. Compared to the Stuttgart version, here the lute has a larger bowl and appears more rotated towards the observer, therefore the pegbox is lengthened, and also the left arm of the musician is differently placed. Finally, the man’s face is less symmetrical, more distorted in the act of singing.

Regarding pigments, non-invasive spectroscopies detected smalt blue (coarsely grinded to keep its intense colour) mixed to lead white in some areas of the blouse, while in other zones black pigment was found instead of blue, meaning this garment was studied with subtle changes of colour, and indeed the sleeves appear – more clearly observing false colour IR imaging – to have been first designed in stripes, as in other paintings by ter Brugghen. Flesh tones, as digital microscopy shows, are a mixture of lead white, yellow, brown and red ochres, some particles of vermillion and large grains of green earth; black pigment, not finely grinded, is added in the shadows. Green earth also appears in the white cuff, correcting its hue. The dark background is obtained by mixing lead white, a black and a yellow pigment.