Lute Player by Valentin de Boulogne - ca. 1625–26 - 128.3 x 99.1 cm Metropolitan Museum of Art Lute Player by Valentin de Boulogne - ca. 1625–26 - 128.3 x 99.1 cm Metropolitan Museum of Art

Lute Player

oil on canvas • 128.3 x 99.1 cm
  • Valentin de Boulogne - before 3 January 1591 - 19 August 1632 Valentin de Boulogne ca. 1625–26

Valentin was the greatest French follower of Caravaggio and one of the outstanding artists in seventeenth-century Rome. His most frequent subjects are scenes of merriment, with music-making, drinking, and fortune-telling. They are stock Caravaggesque themes, but painted in a direct and vivid style. This canvas, showing a soldier of fortune singing a love madrigal, is unique in Valentin’s career. It is perhaps emblematic of the sobriquet he took in Rome: Amador is the Spanish word for "lover boy." The painting belonged to the prestigious collection of Cardinal Mazarin, minister to King Louis XIV, and one of the great collectors of the seventeenth century.