Dear Taco, The picture is an anonymous French School painting in Hamburg Kunsthalle and was featured on the front cover of Early Music magazine in October 1982. The whole picture makes it clear that it's mostly a perspective problem, since the bridge also is on at an impossible [and opposite] angle.
The rose is set grossly to one side as well. But the whole painting is magnificent and gives very much the spirit of the instrument, which looks like a converted Italian yew-wood lute with a French style silver lace round the edge. It may well be that the player did have his frets on at various angles as many players do today to adjust intonation. What is noticeable from the whole painting is that the player has his little finger resting BEHIND the bridge in a postion where lots of surviving museum instruments have wear marks. Thus he is playing very close to the bridge. This may have influenced Bob's choice of picture, since he has been talking a lot of late about the evidence of playing close to the bridge. But from the CD section one can't tell this of course! The red strings are interesting and are not that illogical since they are on the bass side of each course from the fifth downwards. A perfect example of loaded strings and very bright red. In case anyone is interested in seeing the whole painting I'll put it up on my site at http://www.vanedwards.co.uk/hamburg.htm Best wishes, David hi all, I was just looking at the picture on the latest Barto-Weiss CD showing a luteplayer with a french baroque lute. Looks quite normal until you look more careful. Two interesting things: 1. There are 6 red strings indicating loaded gut for strings where normally normal gut would be sufficient. 2. A very strange position of the pegbox. If you look at the white bone part which forms the bridge for the strings from fingerboard to pegbox, you notice that it's not parallel to the frets. The distance between the bone and first fret is smaller for the topstrings than for the bass strings. This could be a mistake by the painter having difficulties with drawing the angle of the pegbox, but it could also be a design to give more length to the bass strings. I think the latter is more logical. Never seen something like that on other paintings or modern copies. Taco -- The Smokehouse, 6 Whitwell Road, Norwich, NR1 4HB England. Telephone: + 44 (0)1603 629899 Website: http://www.vanedwards.co.uk To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
