Musical Scene
Medium
black ink wash over pen and brown ink and black chalk over graphite on gray-brown paper with white heightening, incised
Dimensions
{"image":{"height":0.173,"width":0.202},"support":{"height":0.233,"width":0.268,"depth":0.003}}
Classification
Drawing
Department
Drawings
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
John L. Severance Fund
Accession Number
2019.6
Tags
About this artwork
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.