Les Musiciens

Around 1595 Caravaggio was in his early twenties, newly arrived in Rome and nearly broke, when a wealthy churchman took him in. Cardinal Francesco del Monte loved music and kept fine instruments, and he gave the young painter lodging and work. This is thought to be the first thing Caravaggio made expressly for him. Four boys in loose classical robes gather close together. One tunes a lute, another studies a part-book, a third at the left dressed as Cupid reaches for grapes. It looks like an antique scene, but the faces are real Roman youths of the day, and one of them, the lute player, is thought to be Caravaggio's friend and companion Mario Minniti. The boy looking out at you, just behind, may be the painter himself. The instruments and the open music are painted with the same close attention del Monte would have wanted, down to the strings. The picture then dropped out of sight for centuries and turned up battered at an English country house sale, entering this museum in 1952. Its surface is worn now, so some passages we see are reconstructions of what Caravaggio first laid down.