The Concert

The Concert, dated to around 1630 and now in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum Madrid, dates from Preti's earliest documented period, when he was newly arrived in Rome and absorbing the dominant Caravaggesque influence permeating the city's artistic culture. Preti would have encountered musical company pieces throughout Roman Baroque circles — Caravaggio himself had produced the subject, and his followers continued it — and this early canvas shows the young Calabrian painter working confidently within that tradition. The Thyssen-Bornemisza, assembled primarily by Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza and his son Hans Heinrich in the twentieth century, holds one of the most significant private collections of Old Masters ever assembled, and this early Preti sits among Baroque works that trace the full range of seventeenth-century European painting. The concert scene — figures gathered around music-making — provided both a social subject and an opportunity to explore the relationship between performance and audience.

The early date is reflected in a tighter, more carefully constructed handling than the broad gestural manner of the mature period. Strong Caravaggesque raking light dominates the composition, with figures emerging from deep shadow in the manner Preti would refine throughout his career. Musical instruments — their curved forms and wood textures — receive careful attention as props that anchor the figures in a specific activity.