A Musical Company
Jacob Ochtervelt (Dutch, 1634–1682)
c. 1668
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Framed: 73 x 64.5 x 5.5 cm (28 3/4 x 25 3/8 x 2 3/16 in.); Unframed: 58.5 x 48.9 cm (23 1/16 x 19 1/4 in.)
- Culture
- Netherlands
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
Despite the calm demeanor and elegant disposition of the figures, this interior scene probably represents the interior of a brothel, signaled by the row of female portraits in the background, rarely found in other paintings of this period. The depiction of music provides another clue to the subject. The recorder and violin, played without scores, were perceived as cruder instrumentation and associated with prostitution, versus the elegant and complicated musicmaking seen in the work by Pieter de Hooch in the museum's collection.
