Lost in the music

Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Simon Vouet (French)

1590-1649

 

Woman Playing a Guitar

ca.1618

Oil on canvas

 

This alluring depiction of a woman playing a guitar was painted during Voeut's years in Rome and reveals his interest in the work of Caravaggio with its dramatic lighting and psychological engagement with the beholder.Women playing guitars have a long history in European paintings.Seventeenth-century French engravings of modes and manners often shows them,as here,lost in reverie.One dated in 1630 has the caption,"Love Conquers All but Music Does Not Conquer Love."In 1627,Simon Vouet,already famous,returned to Paris to become painter to the king and the dominant force in French painting.

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Uploaded on October 23, 2017