Lute Player  1629

In his formative years in Leiden and then in Amsterdam, Jan Lievens, like his friend and colleague Rembrandt, was influenced by the exuberant and boldly dramatic close-up paintings of tavern scenes by Utrecht painters such as Jan van Bylert, as in the latter's Merry Company (37.707). Single figures of swaggering musicians spotlighted in a dramatic fashion were one of the f...