Zwei Musiker

Two men and their instruments fill a panel no bigger than a sheet of paper, 28 centimetres by 23. One sits in a broad-brimmed hat and a white ruff, the other stands over him with a feather in his cap, bowing a stringed instrument. The date on it is 1629, and small pictures of musicians and drinkers like this one sold steadily in Haarlem to people hanging them in ordinary rooms rather than great halls. A panel this small was made to be held and looked at close up, and it comes from the years between 1629 and 1636 that produced almost all of her surviving work.