Detail of the Lute Player by Valentin de Boulogne in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, January 2020

Lute Player
ca. 1625–26


Object Details

Artist: Valentin de Boulogne (French, Coulommiers-en-Brie 1591–1632 Rome)

Date: ca. 1625–26

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 50 1/2 x 39 in. (128.3 x 99.1 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Purchase, Walter and Leonore Annenberg Acquisitions Endowment Fund; Director's Fund; Acquisitions Fund; James and Diane Burke and Mr. and Mrs. Mark Fisch Gifts; Louis V. Bell, Harris Brisbane Dick, Fletcher, and Rogers Funds and Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 2008

Accession Number: 2008.459


The greatest French follower of Caravaggio, Valentin was one of the outstanding artists in seventeenth-century Rome. His most frequent subjects are scenes of merriment, with music-making, drinking, and fortune-telling. They are stock Caravaggesque themes, but painted in a direct and vivid style. This canvas, showing a soldier of fortune singing a love madrigal, is unique in Valentin’s career. It is perhaps emblematic of the sobriquet he took in Rome: Amador, Spanish for "lover boy." The painting belonged to the prestigious collection of Cardinal Mazarin, minister to King Louis XIV, and one of the great collectors of the seventeenth century.


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/439933