Lute Player

I found this image in my collection of older paintings of the use of stringed instruments. A lute player with an amusing smile on his face. He really looks as though he is enjoying himself!

I did not keep track of what painter did this painting as I have quite a collection that I have used as a screen saver at times. The paintings range in styles and I tried to keep it within the string instruments genre but I did stray here and their.

The history goes back a long time. Wikipedia again helps us to understand some of this: "The origins of the lute are obscure, and organologists disagree about the very definition of a lute. The highly influential organologist Curt Sachs distinguished between the "long-necked lute" (Langhalslaute) and the short-necked variety: both referred to chordophones with a neck as distinguished from harps and psalteries. Smith and others argue that the long-necked variety should not be called lute at all, since it existed for at least a millennium before the appearance of the short-necked instrument that eventually evolved into what is now known as the lute, nor was it ever called a lute before the 20th century."

"Lutes are made almost entirely of wood. The soundboard is a teardrop-shaped thin flat plate of resonant wood (usually spruce). In all lutes the soundboard has a single (sometimes triple) decorated sound hole under the strings, called the rose. The sound hole is not open, but rather covered with a grille in the form of an intertwining vine or a decorative knot, carved directly out of the wood of the soundboard."

It is interesting to note that they are completely differentiated from harps and other stringed instruments. I have always viewed them as the ancestor of the guitar. But that is for experts to decide it is just an opinion of mine. I have never played a lute but would love to try one. but they are not in favor these days as the guitar has become so popularized as the instrument of choice. They are hard to find at the guitar stores, sort of an oxymoron I suppose I imagine you would find them at "Lute Stores."

By the way, if you recognize the painter of this image please let me know, I would appreciate it. I wonder if it is Caravaggio?

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