Anon: Open air Concert
Italian School 16th Century
Hotel l'Allemande, Bourges.
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One of the puzzles of lute research has been the almost total lack of pictorial evidence for the long tear drop shaped lute associated with work of Laux Maler and Hans Frei, despite several surviving instruments and copious references in the writings of later lutenists such as Mace and Baron as well as the Huyghens corrspondence.
Laux Maler left a vast number of lutes at his death either finished or in stages of completion, so he was clearly running quite a sizeable workshop in Bologna, probably employing members of his family as well as apprentices. He was one of the most famous and sought after makers. Five of his instruments have survived and they are all ifairly large and in the long slender form also used by Hans Frei. The size is not a surprise since the larger instruments were more suited to conversion into the baroque lute form and therefore more likely to have survived through being converted and continuing to be used. What is a surprise though is the total lack of paintings of the sixteenth century showing the long form in smaller lutes and the almost complete lack of paintings of even large lutes in this form. Did Maler make his small lutes in the rounded form we now associate with Venere, Tieffenbrucker, Gerle and Hieber? Do the remainng lutes of his not actually truly represent his output?
So this painting is particularly valuable since it does show such a lute and it clearly has the red varnished back that we know that Maler employed.
It is a nice long shape of, one would guess, about 67 - 70cm string length. It has a light coloured, probably boxwood fingerboard and what look to be ivory or bone pegs. A small rose is set quite low in the soundboard, but unfortunately the player's hand covers the bridge so it's impossible to tell its shape or position. Quite a bold playing position too with the left hand and arm well out, not unlike the playing position shown on the titlepage of Bakfark playing his huge lute.
I might in passing mention the very cello-like form of the large bass viol or violone and the fine pointed renaissance style bow strung with black hair which is so much better for thick bass strings, especially of the catline type.
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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 antispam/lute@cs.dartmouth.edu and I will add them to this page. Do please adjust this address by hand to remove antispam/ |
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Copyright 1999 by David Van Edwards
