The Viola da Gamba Player

The Viola da Gamba Player of 1635, in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, is one of Strozzi's finest examples of the musician genre picture that flourished in seventeenth-century Italy and the Netherlands. The viola da gamba — a fretted, bowed instrument held between the legs — was the aristocratic instrument of the period, associated with cultured domestic music-making and court entertainment. Strozzi brings to the musician subject the same qualities he applied to his street vendors and religious figures: a warm, direct characterisation and an attention to the specific textures of instrument, costume, and human flesh. The Dresden Gemäldegalerie is one of the world's great collections of Baroque painting, and the Strozzi hangs within a context that includes Vermeer, Velázquez, and Rubens.

Canvas with concentrated light on the musician's face and hands — the two sites of musical intelligence — while the instrument's body catches a secondary warm highlight. The gamba's strings, bridge, and f-holes are painted with precise material attention. The musician's slight absorption in performance creates the characteristic tension between self-awareness and the loss of self in music.