A Concert

Bernardino Licinio painted this Concert around 1524, a secular musical scene depicting figures engaged in the making of music that was one of the most popular genres in Venetian painting developed from Giorgione's innovations. The Venetian concert scene—intimate groups of figures playing instruments together in a domestic or garden setting—was among the most distinctively Venetian contributions to the secular genre, its cultivation of sensory pleasure and cultivated leisure as worthy subjects for painting reflecting the Venetian patriciate's self-image as an elegant, pleasure-cultivating elite. Licinio's version has the warm coloring and confident figure construction of the mature Venetian school, the musicians' absorbed attention to their instruments and each other creating the atmosphere of intimate shared pleasure that characterized the genre at its best.

The intimate grouping of musicians creates a mood of harmony and social pleasure characteristic of the Venetian concert tradition. Licinio's warm coloring and naturalistic characterization of the performers give the scene an engaging immediacy.