The Concert ArtistJohannes Vermeer Yearcirca 1664 MediumOil on canvas Dimensions72.5 cm × 64.7 cm (28.5 in × 25.5 in) LocationWhereabouts unknown since the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft in 1990
The Concert (c. 1664) is a painting by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. The 72.5-by-64.7-centimetre (28.5 by 25.5 in) picture depicts a man and two women playing music. It belongs to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, but was stolen in 1990 and remains missing.[1] It is thought to be the most valuable unrecovered stolen painting ever, with a value estimated at over $200,000,000.
The picture shows three musicians: a young woman sitting at a Harpsichord, a man playing the Lute, and a woman who is singing. The Harpsichord's upturned lid is decorated with an Arcadian landscape; its bright coloring stands in contrast to the two paintings hanging on the wall to the right and left. A viola da gamba can be seen lying on the floor.
Of the two paintings in the background, the one on the right is The Procuress by Dirck Van Baburen, a work which also appears in Vermeer's Lady Seated at a Virginal, probably painted around six years after The Concert. The painting on the left is a wild pastoral landscape. The musical theme in Dutch painting in Vermeer's time often connoted love and seduction,[3] a motif reinforced by the presence of Baburen's sexually exuberant picture.
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