Woman Playing a Guitar

A young woman in a loose white blouse turns from her guitar, her lips parted as if mid-song, the instrument cradled in her arms. Simon Vouet painted this seductive image around 1618 in Italy, before he returned to France to become first painter to the king. The warm chiaroscuro, the pearly flesh tones and the casual intimacy of the pose show the young Vouet absorbing the lessons of Caravaggio — and turning them into something lighter, more graceful and more charming.