albrecht durer used a lute to demonstrate a drawing devise he made from a frame bisected with equally spaced, horizontal and lateral wires. by looking through the wire grid the artist could accurately gauge the lute's difficult perspective.
lutes also feature heavily in david hockney's theory that mirrors and prisms were used extensively by the masters to make accurate drawings of traditionally difficult subjects. the twisted peg box and misplaced frets are due to the distortion holbein saw in the lens. i have great sympathy with the poor man who painted this french painting under discussion. imagine spending that much time and talent on something, getting all the essential details of the figure correctly and then falling down disastrously with the lute - (shudder) it's a peculiar thing but i don't think there's any other musical instrument that's captured the imagination of artists quite like the lute and guitar. - bill "and thus i made...a small vihuela from the shell of a creepy crawly..." - Don Gonzalo de Guerrero (1512), "Historias de la Conquista del Mayab" by Fra Joseph of San Buenaventura. go to: http://www.charango.cl/paginas/quieninvento.htm ___________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Messenger - NEW crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
