Musical Scene (1625–55): Art, History and Details

Musical Scene (1625–55) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Gerrit van Honthorst (Dutch, 1590–1656).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

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.

Object facts

• Title: Musical Scene
• Date: 1625–55
• Creator attribution: Gerrit van Honthorst (Dutch, 1590–1656)
• Culture: Netherlands
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: black ink wash over pen and brown ink and black chalk over graphite on gray-brown paper with white heightening, incised
• Dimensions: Support: 23.3 x 26.8 x 0.3 cm (9 3/16 x 10 9/16 x 1/8 in.); Image: 17.3 x 20.2 cm (6 13/16 x 7 15/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - Dutch
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2019.6

A detail from the museum

In 17th-century Holland, scenes of men and women playing music together often had amorous connotations.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Peters, Emily. “Acquisitions 2019: Drawings.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 60, no. 2 (March/April 2020): 20-21.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.