Lute Player Accompanying an Old Man Holding a Musical Score

Rousseaux is thought to have spent some time under Rembrandt's tutelage around 1628, and like his fellow pupils such as Gerrit Dou, Ferdinand Bol and Isaak de Jouderville, he learnt to almost perfectly repeat his master's character heads, called tronies, and came so close in reproducing Rembrandt's tonality, chromatics, and his sitters' meditative moods that modern scholarship continually faced the difficult task of separating the works of Rembrandt from those of his skilled pupils. Such was the connection to Rembrandt that the old man holding the music score is the so-called father of Rembrandt, a Leiden model who was used in the years around 1629-31 by both Rembrandt and Jan Lievens (see for example the Bust of an Old Man in a Fur Cap).

The painting is signed in monogram and dated on the lute: JR. f. A. 1631.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 2 minutes): Francesco da Milano: Tre fantasie for lute