On Mon, 7 May 2007, otsisto wrote:

> Where did you find the first pic? as I think it is not the original
> but an altered picture. Kind of like the picture of Henry VIII instead
> of holding a glove is holding a roasted turkey leg or an Italian
> painting of a grandfather and grandson where the grandfather has a
> bulbous nose and they put a fly on it.

The "clean" painting has muddy areas where the pot was, and the man's
garments are still pulled open and turned up inexplicably. The bawdy
version is the older one.

But that would suggest that the repainting was very recent -- since modern
color photography -- or we would not have both images. Unlikely, that. Two
possibilities I can think of:

-- The alterations were made only for a photographic version, not on
the painting itself, possibly photoshopped on. I have seen such
bowdlerizing done for pictures that are, say, reproduced in children's 
books or other venues where naughty bits are not acceptable. Somehow,
then, bildindex picked up the doctored version by mistake, but the owning
museum shows the correct image.

-- They are two different paintings, one being a copy of the first (or
both copies of another), and only one was repainted. It was actually quite
common for artists, or their workshops, to produce multiple versions of a
popular scene; you see this as far back as the 15th century Flemish
artists. This would be a very good copy -- it seems identical -- except
for possibly the hands of the fiddler (both left and right hands) which
seem a bit different. The color overall is muddier, too, which may reflect
worse deterioration in this particular painting, or may just reflect the
photo quality or the scan.

--Robin

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