Tátrai Vilmos szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 90-91.(Budapest, 1999)
NÉMETH, ISTVÁN: Musical Company
MUSICAL COMPANY REMARKS ON SOME 17 TH-CENTLJRY DUTCH GENRE PAINTINGS In 17 Ih-century Dutch genre paintings we frequently encounter figures playing a variety of musical instruments. Such figures are seen especially often in paintings that became popular in the early decades of the century and which have been referred to in recent literature as "merrymakers'''. 1 Whereas in contemporary depictions of peasant festivities it is mostly bagpipe players who supply the music for dancing, the participants in the fashionable scenes are usually shown playing a stringed, or in some cases, a keyboard instrument. 2 The early portrayers of this theme, David Vinckboons and Esaias van de Velde, generally depicted these elegant parties as taking place by the side of a richly laid table set outdoors, in a bower, a park, or else at the edge of the woods. 3 Later, from the 1620s on, Willem Buytewech and Dirck Hals more and more often place scenes on this theme indoors, in a variety of interiors. 4 Influenced by the above masters, within a few years there were a number of Dutch genre-painters specializing in this subject: Pieter Codde, Willem Duyster, Jan Olis, Anthonie Palamedesz., I lendrick Pot and Pieter Quast, to mention only the better-known names. Their genre pictures This essay was made possible by OTKA research program no. «T I 7861» 1 Similar musical motifs are naturally found not only in genre paintings of the period but also in portraits, still-lives, or in diverse Biblical and mythological scenes and allegorical depictions, endowed with various meanings, as the case may be. For more recent works about the iconography of this subject, see: Ember, I., Zene a festészetben (Music in Painting), Budapest 1984; Muziek en Grafiek. Burgermoraal en muziek in de 16de-en 17de-eeuwse Nederlanden. Antwerp (Hessenhuis) 1994; The Hoogsteder Exhibition of Music and Painting in The Golden Age, The Hague (Hoogsteder and Hoogsteder) - Antwerp (Hessenhuis Museum) 1994. 2 Ever since antiquity wind instruments have been considered to be "inferior" to the "nobler" string or keyboard instruments. [In this connection see, among others, Raupp. HJ., Musik im Atelier. Darstellungen musizierender Künstler in der niederländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Oud Holland 92 (1978) 106-129.] Thus the divergence between the types of musical instruments seen at peasant festivities and at more fashionable social scenes may have been caused not only by the doubtless existing differences between the musical customs prevailing in diverse social layers but also by the notion of decorum. 3 Regarding works on such themes by Vinckboons and Van de Velde, see: Masters of SeventeenthCentury Dutch Genre Painting, Philadelphia (Philadelphia Museum of Art) 1984, 328-331 and 349-350; see also: Goossens, K., David Vinckboons, Antwerp - The Hague 1954, and Keycs, G., Esaias van de Velde, Doomspijk 1984. 4 About Willem BuyteweclTs oeuvre, which occupies a significant place in the evolution of 17thcentury Dutch genre painting, see: Haverkamp Begemann, E., Willem Buytewech, Amsterdam 1958; Kunstreich, J.S., Der "Geistreiche Willem". Studien zu W. Buytewech (1591-1624). Kiel 1959; Willem Buytewech 1591-1624. Rotterdam (Museum Boymans-van Beuningen) 1974-75.
