Job and the musicians.

The Master of 1518's Job and the Musicians depicts the Old Testament patriarch on his dung heap, his suffering made the occasion for a musical performance by figures who in the biblical text are visitors seeking to comfort him. The subject was particularly associated with the monastic and religious tradition that found spiritual meaning in Job's patient endurance of extreme suffering, and it had an additional secular resonance: music as consolation for affliction, the arts as a remedy for spiritual and physical pain. The Antwerp master's characteristic compositional density and rich color create a scene that balances the patron's misery with the musicians' cultivated activity.

The painting demonstrates the technical conventions and artistic vocabulary of the period, with attention to composition, color, and the rendering of form appropriate to the subject.