Lute of the Month

May

Jost Amman 1568

Jost Amman (1539 - ????) The Lutemaker
Eygentliche Beschreibung Aller Stände auff Erden, 1568

Carel Fabritius

Carel Fabritius (1622 - 1654) View in Delft
National Gallery

Carel Fabritius, who moved to Delft in about 1650, was fascinated by perspective illusion. Most of Fabritius's life-work seems to have been destroyed when the town's powder magazine blew up on 12 October 1654, wrecking a large area of Delft and killing the artist himself as he was working on a portrait. But one important 'perspective piece' survives: View in Delft, which shows the New Church from the Oude Langendijk. The pronounced distortions of the cobbled street and the seller of musical instruments in the foreground of this picture have provoked critics into a series of conjectures about how it was painted and originally displayed. Among these, Quentin Williams and Peter Kemp have argued that Fabritius used a camera obscura with a curved screen, and that the painting was mounted, or was intended for mounting,on a curved frame, perhaps inside a box with a peephole. Guardian newspaper article

Carel Fabritius

Carel Fabritius (1539 - ????) View in Delft
National Gallery

Carel Fabritius

Carel Fabritius (1539 - ????) View in Delft
National Gallery

Carel Fabritius

Carel Fabritius (1539 - ????) View in Delft
National Gallery

Carel Fabritius

Carel Fabritius (1539 - ????) View in Delft
National Gallery

Carel Fabritius

Carel Fabritius (1539 - ????) View in Delft
National Gallery

Carel Fabritius

Carel Fabritius (1539 - ????) View in Delft
National Gallery

If anyone has any comments about these pictures which differ from or expand on mine, please do either email me direct or submit them to the lutenet at lute@cs.dartmouth.edu and I will add them to this page.

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Copyright 2015 by David Van Edwards .