Village Musicians (The Sense of Hearing)

In Antwerp in 1617 and 1618, Jan Brueghel and Rubens painted the five senses as a set of lavish allegories. Their Hearing, now in the Prado in Madrid, is a palace room crowded with lutes, viols, clocks and sheets of music, with a goddess at its centre playing the lute. Brouwer's Hearing makes do with a village fiddle. A man saws away at it, and he is clearly enjoying himself. The museum reads the rest of the company less kindly. The drinkers behind him are having trouble reading their sheet of music, which suggests that what they produce is rough and out of tune, and the jug in the foreground hints that this is closer to drunken bawling than to singing. Like the other senses from the series in this cabinet, it is a panel only about 24 centimetres tall.