Woman Tuning a Mandolin

By 1658 the Dutch Republic was prosperous enough that a merchant's parlour might hold a lute or a mandolin, and painters like Metsu made small pictures of exactly such rooms to hang in them. Here a well-dressed woman sits tuning her mandolin, her fingers on the pegs, her gaze drifting somewhere past the strings. To a Dutch viewer of the day the instrument was rarely just an instrument. Music stood for love and courtship, and an untuned string for a heart not yet settled, so the quiet act of bringing it into tune carried a second meaning everyone in the room would have caught. Off to the side a young boy plays with a dog, an ordinary touch of household life that keeps the scene from tipping into pure allegory. The panel is tiny, barely larger than a sheet of writing paper, one of the finely finished cabinet pieces Florentine collectors prized. That is how it came to hang in the Uffizi.