Bagpipe Player

Hendrick ter Brugghens Bagpipe Player, signed and dated 1624, is a rollicking half-length of a rustic musician leaning forward to puff at his instrument, the broad bagpipe rendered with jaunty humour and thick, juicy paint. Ter Brugghen was the senior master of the Utrecht Caravaggisti, the Dutch artists who carried Caravaggio’s realism home from Rome, but he softened the Italian’s tenebrism with a daylight clarity and a beguiling warmth all his own. The vibrant red costume against the dusky ground makes this one of the most colourful of all Netherlandish Caravaggesque scenes.