A Woman playing a Lute to Two Men

In the Dutch Republic of the 1660s, making music at home was an accepted way for young men and women to meet, so closely tied to flirtation that many songbooks held only love songs. Ter Borch painted this gathering around 1667 or 1668 and kept it entirely proper. A young woman in a yellow satin jacket plays a theorbo, a long-necked lute. Her eyes follow the raised hand of the seated man, who holds his own copy of the music and seems to be beating time, and the man in the cloak watches that same hand. The hints are small, a bed in the shadows at the back and a spaniel wandering in at the open door. Ter Borch assembled the room from pieces he had used before, and the candlestick and silver box on the table turn up in his other pictures too.