Merry Violinist with Wineglass

Entry

The earliest dated half-length single-figure musicians in the northern Netherlands were produced by Dirck van Baburen, Hendrick ter Brugghen and Abraham Bloemaert in 1621, and the type quickly became a popular one. Often lyrical in mood, these works have their origins in the mostly pastoral single-figure musicians of 16th-century north Italian artists like Savoldo and artists in the circles of Giorgione and Jacopo Bassano. Perhaps significant for Honthorst’s interest in the genre were the two musicians described as ‘Buffoni’ and attributed to Giorgione in the collection of Honthorst’s Roman patron, Cardinal Scipione Borghese.¹³ The present painting, and one in Schwerin of a Singing Elder with a Flute (fig. a), are the earliest dated examples from Honthorst’s hand. The exuberant, laughing musician bursting into the viewer’s space from behind a window or balustrade in the Amsterdam painting differs dramatically from the often quiet, poetic mood of especially Ter Brugghen’s musicians, as well as Caravaggio’s only single-figure musician, the Lute Player in St Petersburg.¹⁴ The diagonal placement of Honthorst’s figure, the broad brushstrokes, especially in the costume, and the seemingly quivering hair and feathers, as well as the highlights on the hand, shoulder and face, add to the vivacity of this violinist.

Manfredi’s Drinker in Modena has been seen as a direct model for Honthorst’s painting, as both figures are possessed of a joyful attitude (fig. b).¹⁵ A painting such as Baburen’s 1622 Lute Player in Utrecht,¹⁶ with its foreshortened lute and closely cropped figure, might have inspired Honthorst to create the first truly trompe l’oeil version of the single-figure musician. A year prior to his Rijksmuseum work, Honthorst painted a di sotto in su ceiling, possibly for his own house, showing merry music-making figures gathered around a balustrade.¹⁷ A number of other scenes of joyful musicians set behind trompe l’oeil balustrades followed in 1623¹⁸ and 1624.¹⁹ Although he was perhaps spurred on by the single-figure musicians created by other Utrecht artists, Honthorst’s innovative approach is consistent with his own artistic preoccupations at the time.

Attempts to identify the figure in Honthorst’s painting as a Rederijkersnar, the fool in the Dutch variant of the Commedia dell’arte, or as Peeckelhaering, a figure in popular Dutch theatre whose insatiable appetite for herring led to an equally insatiable thirst, have been based on the assumption that the figure is dressed in ‘late Burgundian theatrical costume’.²⁰ The striped doublet and feathered beret, however, were more likely based on the costume of Caravaggio and Manfredi’s bravi.²¹ The hypothesis has also been advanced that the present painting represented Taste (and, as such, had a vanitas function) in a series of the five senses which included the Singing Elder with a Flute in Schwerin (Hearing) and three other, now supposedly lost, compositions.²² The most persuasive argument against this hypothesis is that the violin held by the figure in the present painting represents Hearing, and therefore would overlap with the sense represented in the Schwerin painting had they indeed been part of a series of the five senses.²³ Nor is another, similar hypothesis advanced by some scholars, that the Amsterdam and Schwerin paintings were conceived as pendants, thoroughly convincing.²⁴ Indeed, in both paintings the figure is seen from below and placed behind a trompe l’oeil balustrade. The dimensions of both works are also similar, especially if one allows for the possibility that the Schwerin painting might have been cut down on the left. The lighting, which comes from the left, is also consistent in both paintings. The figures, however, have different relationships to their settings, as the singing man leans back while the violinist leans forward, producing a disjointed effect when the two works are placed side by side.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

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This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 135.