Instrumentalists - I

Caesar van Everdingen
Young Woman playing a Cithern
ca. 1660
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen

Jacopo de' Barbari
Satyr playing the Lira da Braccio for Wife and Child
ca. 1501-1503
engraving
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Hans Brosamer
Lute Player
1537
engraving
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Antoine Pesne
Eleanor von Schlieben, Freifrau von Keyserling
ca. 1745
oil on canvas
Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin

Jan Sadeler the Elder after Marten de Vos the Elder
Woman with Lute
(figure of Music from series The Seven Liberal Arts)
ca. 1590
engraving
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Johann Gottfried Schadow
Marianne Schadow posing as Mignon
(character in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister)
1802
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

attributed to Peter Paul Rubens
Portrait of a Man with a Lute
ca. 1609-10
oil on canvas
Musée Saint-Loup, Troyes

Johann Caspar Weinrauch
Lute Player in a Park with copy of the Farnese Hercules
1799
etching
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Friedrich Wasmann
Italian Model with Mandolin
1833
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Léon Comerre
Pierrot with Mandolin
1884
oil on canvas
Musée départemental des Hautes-Alpes, Gap

Jean-Baptiste Greuze
Guitar Player
1757
oil on canvas
National Museum, Warsaw

Erich Lüdke
Cabaret Astoria
cfa. 1912
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Heinrich Friedrich Füger
Two Women making Music
ca. 1795
drawing
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Paris Bordone
Man playing Viol da Gamba
ca. 1525-35
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Rose Simon-Barwig
Walter Barwig playing the Cello
1924
drawing
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Domenichino (Domenico Zampieri)
King David playing the Harp before the Lord
ca. 1619
oil on canvas
Château de Versailles

I, Alcimenes, who used to protect the crops from the starlings and that high-flying robber the Bistonian crane, was swinging the pliant arms of my leathern sling to keep the crowd of birds away, when a dipsas viper wounded me about the ankles, and injecting into my flesh the bitter bile from her jaws robbed me of the sunlight. Look ye how gazing at what was in the air I noticed not the evil that was creeping at my feet.  

No longer, Therimachus, dost thou play thy shepherd's tunes on the pipes near this crooked-leaved plane. Nor shall the horned kine listen again to the sweet music thou didst make, reclining by the shady oak. The burning bolt of heaven slew thee, and they at nightfall came down the hill to their byre driven by the snow. 

Of themselves in the evening the kine came home to byre from the hill through the heavy snow. But Therimachus, alas! sleeps the long sleep under the oak. The fire of heaven laid him to rest.

The dumb image of himself attracted Archianax the three-year-old boy, as he was playing by the well. His mother dragged him all dripping from the water, asking herself if any life was left in him. The child defiled not with death the dwelling of the Nymphs, but fell asleep on his mother's knees, and slumbers sound.

Not because I lacked a funeral when I died, do I lie here, a naked corpse on wheat-bearing land. Duly was I buried once on a time, but now by the ploughman's hand the iron share hath rolled me out of my tomb. Who said that death was deliverance from evil, when not even the tomb, stranger, is the end of my sufferings?

So there is no more turf, husbandman, left for thee to break up, and thy oxen tread on the backs of tombs, and the share is among the dead! What doth it profit thee? How much is this wheat ye shall snatch from ashes, not from earth? Ye shall not live for ever, and another shall plough you up, you who set to all the example of this evil husbandry.

– from Book VI (Sepulchral Epigrams) of the Greek Anthology, translated and edited by W.R. Paton (1917)