Johannes Vermeer - The Concert 1664
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The Concert 1664
72x64cm oil/canvas
Stolen, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Fenway Court, Boston, MA, US
The image is only being used for informational and educational purposes
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
The Concert (c. 1664) is a painting by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. The 72.5-by-64.7-centimetre (28.5 by 25.5 in) picture depicts a man and two women playing music. It belongs to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, but was stolen in 1990 and remains missing. It is thought to be the most valuable unrecovered stolen painting ever, with a value estimated at over $200,000,000.
The picture shows three musicians: a young woman sitting at a Harpsichord, a man playing the Lute, and a woman who is singing. The Harpsichord's upturned lid is decorated with an Arcadian landscape; its bright coloring stands in contrast to the two paintings hanging on the wall to the right and left. A viola da gamba can be seen lying on the floor.
Of the two paintings in the background, the one on the right is The Procuress by Dirck Van Baburen, a work which also appears in Vermeer's Lady Seated at a Virginal, probably painted around six years after The Concert. The painting on the left is a wild pastoral landscape. The musical theme in Dutch painting in Vermeer's time often connoted love and seduction, a motif reinforced by the presence of Baburen's sexually exuberant picture.