DOU, Gerrit
(b. 1613, Leiden, d. 1675, Leiden)

Violon Player

1653
Oil on panel, 32 x 20 cm
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

This painting provides an example of Dou's use of a niche format in which an arched top enhances the illusion by eliminating what are normally the empty upper corners of a picture. A man, likely identifiable as a painter because of his beret, peers at a birdcage while playing the violin in a stone enclosure. He leans against a sumptuous Turkish carpet draped over a magnificent stone relief of putti playing with a goat. This relief, which Dou used repeatedly in his niche paintings, is based on a frieze by the renowned Flemish sculptor François Duquesnoy, plaster copies of which were known in Leiden at this time. In the background another man smokes a pipe while still another grinds pigment before an easel. In light of this background scene the subject of this panel can probably be identified as that of an artist playing a musical instrument in his studio, a subject encountered in other genre paintings (and in artists' self-portraits). Generally speaking it illustrates music's ability to stimulate creativity.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 15 minutes):
Giuseppe Tartini: Violin concerto in A Major