Luteplayer and fluteplayer by candlelight

Musical scenes by candlelight were among the most commercially successful subjects for Caravaggist painters across Europe. Stom’s 1632 pairing of a lute player and a flute player, now at Schloss Weissenstein in Pommersfelden, transforms a genre subject into a study of concentration and collaboration under lamplight. The Schönborn family collection at Weissenstein preserves many such seventeenth-century genre scenes. Stom's mastery of candlelight effects was among the most technically accomplished of all Caravaggist painters, surpassing many of his contemporaries in the subtlety of his graduated shadows and the warmth of his artificial illumination.

The candle between the two musicians creates symmetrical pools of light on their instruments and faces. Stom captures the different hand positions required for lute and flute with observational precision.