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March 20, 2017
Mid-Morning Open Thread
The Lute Player
Theodor Rombouts
From the Philadelphia Museum of Art web site....
Lute players were often ridiculed for the inordinate amount of time they devoted to tuning their instruments. The intense look of this street musician seems to underscore the difficulty of the task and suggest that perhaps more than musical harmony is at stake. Showing a musical instrument being tuned was a veiled reference to striving for harmony in love. Stringed instruments could also symbolize temperance, especially when shown in the company of a tankard and a pipe, as here.
There is no truth to the rumor that Garrett was the model for this work.