Musical Scene

1625–55

Musical Scene, 1625–55. Gerrit van Honthorst (Dutch, 1590–1656). Black ink wash over pen and brown ink and black chalk over graphite on gray-brown paper with white heightening, incised; sheet: 17.3 x 20.4 cm (6 13/16 x 8 1/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund 2019.6 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. In 17th-century Holland, scenes of men and women playing music together often had amorous connotations.