Shop art print and framed art The Lute Player by Caravaggio

The Lute Player is a painting by Caravaggio that was painted between 1595 and 1596 and is kept in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. It was commissioned by the Marquis Giustiniani, one of the Lombard painter's greatest admirers. Typical of the early period of Caravaggio's career - he had moved to Rome and was beginning to win private commissions there - the painting depicts a young musician playing a lute, while in front of him a group of objects (sheet music, a musical instrument, a vase of flowers) form a still life. There are two other versions of this painting, one in the Wildenstein Collection (New York) and the other at Badminton House in Gloucestershire, England, although its attribution to Caravaggio is disputed. The painting was probably produced in 1595 or 1596, when Caravaggio was living in Rome, from where he would have to flee a decade later. The painting was commissioned by the Marquis Vincenzo Giustiniani, one of the most important patrons of Caravaggio's career. Well-versed in the arts of his time, Marquis Giustiniani had studied music in his youth with the composer Jacques Arcadelt, whose score appears in the painting. It was Baron Dominique Vivant Denon who bought the painting from the Giustiniani family during the Napoleonic era, selling it in 1808 to Russian Tsar Alexander I and immediately entrusting it to the Hermitage Museum. Between 2016 and 2018, the painting underwent a major restoration - the first since its creation - which removed thick [...]

 

This artwork is a painting from the classical period. It belongs to the baroque style.

 

« The Lute Player » is kept at State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.

 

Find the full description of The Lute Player by Caravaggio on Wikipedia.