Dear David, thanks for making he painting available.
it is quite interesting that instruments in general and lutes and violins in particular tend to be somewhat distorted even in paintings of better masters. My son, who is 18, is working very hard to master drawing and painting. He is practising quite a lot, at least as much as I practised the guitar when I was as old as he is now :-) He is now rather good at drawing heads, faces, figures. But he still has a hard time painting difficultly shaped things like a guitar, for instance. It appears that the old masters practised their anatomy well (face, hands and what can be seen of the body are not bad in terms of perspective), but, lutes not being a very common object, they could not rely on their training and the results are less satisfactory than the remainder of the painting. It has always puzzled me why painters tend to place the frets at more or less equal distances. Even Holbein in his ambassadors painting (still to be viewed at www.jsbach.mynetcologne.de/ambassadors.html), which is detailed to the degree of fussiness does not place the frets correctly and the pegbox also looks a bit twisted. g On 05.11.2005, at 18:43, David Van Edwards wrote: > 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
