Jarislow,
Certain things do stand out as accurate: 1) Lay a ruler down the edge of the fingerboard on both sides, these coincide with edges of the bridge. The neck was originally a baroque lute with a bent neck. The artist does not bother to correct the un-esthetic crossing of the neck angle with the extended bass strings. This concept is reinforced by the strap connecting to the body of the lute. This could not have been a theorbo or arch lute, the strap would then likely be attached to the back of the lower pegbox. The weight of the upper pegbox would have been too great to use a shoulder strap. 2) She could not have played the instrument at that angle because she would have to support the weight of the neck with her left hand, despite the articulate looking pose. 3) Strings placed on the unused nut slots would not lie on the fretboard unless moved over toward the center of the bridge on the other end. The bridge was intentionally re-drilled for this configuration. I would conjecture that this was done because the real user found the top string too close to the side of the fretboard, or wanted more string spacing on the bridge. 4) The entire string set is centered on the rosette. Someone altered the bridge holes to get the string set centered, and most likely to get more strings on the bridge. We can't see if the bridge extends beyond the bass strings, I think it might. 5) The artist has unusual dirt drawn on the top. There is the expected dirt where the higher frets are played, where they rest their head on the upper side of the belly, dirt around the bottom from handling it, and a faint line from the occasional pinky touch. The knee stain around the bottom looks like sweat that was cleaned off. The person who actually played this used the strap over the shoulder and rested the lute on the (at times sweaty) knee. In my opinion, this was a modified 10 or 11 course lute converted to a swan neck Louis Aull -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
