Man playing the lute

Man Playing the Lute, painted in 1664 and now in the Leiden Collection, belongs to Steen's treatment of music-making as both pleasure and moral metaphor. Music in Dutch seventeenth-century genre painting was consistently associated with the theme of courtship and the pleasures of the senses — it was one of the five senses in allegorical painting and simultaneously a vehicle for seduction in genre scenes. A man playing the lute was typically making music for a woman, or demonstrating his refined accomplishment as a form of social display. Steen engaged with this tradition while typically introducing a note of irony or social observation that complicated the conventional meaning — his musicians are often slightly too eager, or their audience is inattentive, or the setting combines musical refinement with domestic disorder in a way that gently undermines any simple celebration of harmony.

The lute player is rendered with careful attention to the instrument itself — its characteristic pear-shaped body, the complex arrangement of strings and tuning pegs, the elegant curvature of the neck. Steen's handling of the polished wood's reflective surface demonstrates his facility with varied material textures.