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Notes
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A young couple seem about to strike up a duet. The woman, seated at the keyboard of a virginal, hands her partner a musical score, presumably the part for the violin on the table next to him. Scenes of music making among young people were common in seventeenth-century Dutch painting, and they would certainly have been understood as references to romantic love and -- often -- a setting for potential debauchery.Here Metsu seems to be drawing a parallel between the wine glass proffered by the young man and the one held by the figure in the picture on the wall. This refers to another painting by Metsu, one showing drunken celebration on the Christian festival of Twelfth Night. So he might be suggesting that this scene of musical innocence could, fuelled by alcohol, lead to something less chaste.
Title
A Man and a Woman seated by a Virginal
Date
about 1665
Medium
Oil on oak
Measurements
H 38.4 x W 32.2 cm
Accession number
NG839
Acquisition method
Bought, 1871
Work type
Painting
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