The "toy theorbo" discussion reminded me the painting by Laurent de La Hyre I saw in Metropolitan museum (last month after my NY concert). It's called "Allegory of music" (1649) and shows the lady tuning rather not so big (at least in proportion to her body), single strung theorbo [1]http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/god4/ho_50.189.htm# or [2]http://tinyurl.com/conmfc . I wouldn't like however focus on toyness theme, which is very interesting btw, in spite we don't possess enough data to solve it now. What drew my attention when I saw it however (which is unfortunately not so visible on reproductions) were some small details. The whole painting is quite big 105.7 x 144.1 cm with fast colors and sharp contours so there can't be any ambiguity about it. Apart from slightly strange, flat bottom end, what makes one wonder is the stringing. The string color is very consistent from the bridge to the peg box (even the loose ends inside the peg box are of the same color so it can't be accidental). When you enter the hall and see the picture you have an impression that the theorbo is strung with copper wounds. Well, I am not suggesting it really was, but the tone color of the bass strings resembles copper quite a lot. There is another surprise: strings 1-5 look like ordinary gut, then 6th is copper-like, 7th (here, here) almost white (!) resembling silver wound, and 8-13 again copper color. Okay, so let's assume they were loaded, but then why the player wasn't consistent in the choice of basses? If they weren't wound or loaded so what are the other possibilities? Dyed? Maybe, but another interesting feature of the strings is the way they look at the bridge - the knots are tight (unusual for thick gut) so they had to be pretty elastic (low tension?). Then, obviously the painting process comes to mind which very often played the role of photography. La Hyre was known in Paris as a painter of a great number of portraits especially those of the principal dignitaries of the municipality and was called by Richelieu to the Palais Royal. In short we can rely on his paintings as a good source of information. So we are probably left with 3 possibilities: 1/ basses were dyed and the player picked 7th course from different manufacture 2/ La Hyre painted what he saw at that given moment - the white 7th string was put on after the original proper (loaded?) string had broken 3/ 7th string was made of some kind of substitute which the player consciously preferred to have on that course. Actually, 1 and 2 are most probable IMHO, however inconsistencies in string coloration can be found on paintings of some other masters as well.
Any other ideas? Best Jaroslaw -- References 1. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/god4/ho_50.189.htm 2. http://tinyurl.com/conmfc To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
