Woman Playing a Lute

Cornelis Bega painted this quiet interior in 1664, the last year of his life. That summer plague moved through Haarlem, his home town, and it took him late that summer, at around 32. Knowing that, the calm of the scene lands differently. A young woman sits close to us with a lute, caught in a private moment of music. Bega had trained with Adriaen van Ostade, a painter of noisy, crowded taverns, but here he does the opposite, giving us one figure, warm light, and a hush. The little panel has a companion, a man with a lute, and the two were meant to hang together as a small pair on a musical theme. It is among the last things Bega finished.