Young Musician in a Workshop of Musical Instruments

Among the things on the table beside the young man is a small telescope. Galileo had published what he saw through one in 1610, and when this canvas was painted, in the early 1620s, the tube was still a recent object to own. The picture was once catalogued as a Caravaggio. Roberto Longhi reassigned it to Cecco del Caravaggio, one of the master's close followers, and read the scene as a musical instrument maker's shop, which is where the usual title comes from. Marina Lambraki-Plaka, for three decades the gallery's director, proposed instead an allegory of the five senses: the instruments for hearing, a coin and a feather for touch, the telescope for sight, a carnation for smell, a carafe of wine for taste. A close version of the same composition hangs at Apsley House in London, the Duke of Wellington's house at Hyde Park Corner.