A parting shot before I head to Corsica for a week: http://www.cma.org/Explore/artistwork.asp? searchText=bonvin&tab=1&recNo=0&woRecNo=3
This is a great painting because many call it Young Woman with a Mandolin, but have a closer look. As you will see in the notes, it was painted 1870 or later, long after the instrument was supposed to be obsolete. Of course, it may just have been an old prop lying around, as suggested in the article cited below. Anyone with access to JSTOR can go there, read more and tell us about it (I haven't got access to it): links.jstor.org/ sici?sici=0003-0139(199321)46%3A1%3C144%3ARIOMIN% 3E2.0.CO%3B2-Q "1874) of Miss Louison Kohler playing and singing to an English guitar-which by now we might identify as an old studio prop of Bonvin's-Duffin mentions "a ..." Bonvin also etched (I think) The Mandoline Player, a.k.a. Le Guitariste, which shows the same instrument: http://www.artnet.com/artwork/424347995/francois-bonvin-the-mandoline- player.html I was unable to access his The Mandolin Players. Maybe one of you will have better luck: http://search.famsf.org:8080/view.shtml?record=66251&=list&=1&=&=And I'm not sure how much access to internet I'll have in Corsica. Enjoy the week. Doc To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
