Lute of the Month
September

The lute is a big, bold, broad ribbed lute of perhaps 67cm string length and perhaps 9 or 11 deeply scalloped ribs. This is a natural feature of bending broad thin ribs and was evidently much liked, since later makers went to such lengths to reproduce the effect in narrow ribs where it doesn't arise naturally. The shape is not at all like the surviving lutes by Laux Maler and Hans Frei of Bologna who were credited with introducing the long teardrop shape about twenty years later, but more rounded like the lutes associated with Venice. The rose has been redrawn in a lower position and has only been sketched in. The neck is long and so narrow that, taken together with the date, one would surmise that the lute has only five courses.

Clearly the artist's main interest was in the problems of perspective and the rendering of naturalistic hand positions. It is this which makes the picture so interesting because it leads one to trust the result more than might otherwise be the case. The player is seated and resting the lute on one knee in a very slightly head-down position. The right hand, with its clearly positioned little finger, is approaching the strings from a parallel position and clearly has the thumb out position, plucking the strings over the rose. The left hand, in both the detail and the main picture, is grasping the whole neck with the thumb well over the top and seemingly stopping the bottom course. Fascinatingly, the first finger is doubled back at the first joint to allow stopping two courses at once, which is something often talked about in the correspondence in the lute net but never so clearly shown in the iconographical evidence.