Bagpipe Player

A rollicking half-length of a rustic musician leaning forward to puff at his instrument, The Bagpipe Player renders its broad instrument with jaunty humour and thick, juicy paint. Hendrick ter Brugghen signed and dated the picture 1624; he 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.