Look closer: three details in this image
- The lute The instrument anchors the foreground group.
- The music Sheets and attentive faces turn the picture into a scene of shared performance.
- Cupid and grapes The winged figure at left carries grapes, joining music to love and pleasure.
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by Tom Gurney
Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Page Created on / Page Updated on
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000
The Musicians by Caravaggio
The young figures in Caravaggio's Musicians are gathered around instruments and a score, but they have not settled into a neat performance. One seems to tune a lute, another attends to the music, and a winged child eats grapes at the edge. The painting holds the moment before sound becomes a shared event. It also asks whether we are seeing real musicians, an allegory of music, or both.[1]
The Metropolitan Museum of Art dates the canvas to 1597 and connects it with Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte's household. The Met calls it an allegory of Music because Cupid is present, yet its figures have individual features and the scene recalls contemporary performance. This combination of constructed meaning and observed people is central to the work.[1]
Caravaggio in context
The Cardsharps
c.1595Calling of Saint Matthew
1599–1600Supper at Emmaus
1601At a Glance
- ArtistMichelangelo Merisi, called Caravaggio (1571–1610)
- TitleThe Musicians (also called Concert of Youths)
- Date1597[1]
- Mediumoil on canvas[1]
- Dimensions92.1 × 118.4 cm[1]
- CollectionThe Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, object 52.81[1]
- Early patronageconnected by the Met with Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte[1]
- Subjectyouths with instruments and music, joined by a winged Cupid[1]
Contents
- What Is Happening Among the Figures?
- A Concert That Has Not Begun
- Cupid and the Allegory of Music
- Models, Likenesses and a Possible Self-Portrait
- Del Monte's Household and Roman Musical Culture
- Can the Music Be Identified?
- Composition, Light and the Viewer's Position
- Titles, Copies and the Object's Identity
- Frequently Asked Questions
Look closer: The Musicians
Four figures and their instruments crowd the shallow space. Close views show how performance, preparation and listening overlap.
123Details from The Musicians
Select a detail image to open the full-size gallery, then use the arrows to compare views.
The central lute
The lute cuts diagonally across the central musician, leading from his hands toward the group behind him.
The score and listener
The foreground figure holds music close while turning toward the player. His exposed back makes the viewer feel positioned inside the group.
Cupid at the edge
The small winged figure at the left handles fruit, adding a note of desire to a scene otherwise filled with musical preparation.
What Is Happening Among the Figures?
Several youths occupy a shallow space close to the picture surface. One has a lute, another a sheet of music; a violin lies within the group. Behind them a winged boy reaches for grapes. The cluster is intimate but not static. Hands and eyes are directed towards different things, as though the musicians are preparing rather than playing together.[1]
The title The Musicians could suggest a documentary scene of performers at work. The Met's audio commentary resists that shortcut: the lute is being tuned, someone is examining music, and an instrument lies to one side. Associate Curator David Pullins describes the arrangement as constructed from models rather than a snapshot of one rehearsal. The evidence is in the picture's different tasks, not merely in a curator's label.[1]
The figures' proximity makes us conscious of a social setting without specifying a room. They are close enough that a shoulder or hand can interrupt another person's view. The image seems to record a pause, but that pause is carefully organised. Music is present as expectation, an object to read and a practice about to begin.
A Concert That Has Not Begun
The painting is often linked to a report by Caravaggio's contemporary Giovanni Baglione. Baglione wrote of a “concert” with youths painted from nature soon after Caravaggio joined Cardinal del Monte's household. The Met says its canvas is most likely that work. “Most likely” keeps the historical identification in proportion to the surviving evidence; Baglione did not leave a modern object number.[1]
The difference between a concert and its preparation matters. A concert would make the performance the event; here attention falls on work before the event. Tuning, reading and waiting give the figures distinct roles. The painting asks us to imagine sound while remaining silent. A viewer can almost hear the first note precisely because it has not yet been played.
The early descriptions do not all give the same kind of evidence. Baglione's report links a painted concert to Caravaggio's arrival in del Monte's household. In a later marginal note on Baglione's book, Giovanni Pietro Bellori criticised the composition's flatness. Keith Christiansen's Met catalogue relates that quality to figures posed separately and to the picture's constructed, allegorical effect. Bellori's judgment is an early response to the work, not a record of the exact order in which Caravaggio painted the four figures.[1][6]
The instruments and score also make the scene concrete. They are not generic badges attached to ideal figures. They invite a person familiar with music to recognise a practical world of preparation. The Met's curator notes that del Monte supported musical performances, so the painting belongs within a patronage setting in which music was an active social practice.[1]
Cupid and the Allegory of Music
The small figure with wings is Cupid. Without him, the work might be read simply as a gathering of young performers. His presence changes the category: the Met describes the picture as an allegory representing Music, while still acknowledging its engagement with contemporary performance and individual models.[1]
Cupid does not sit apart as a solemn explanatory emblem. He eats grapes. The action is playful and bodily, joining the symbolic figure to the same world of fruit, hands and appetite as the other youths. That mixture is one reason the painting avoids a rigid division between “real scene” and “allegory.” The viewer can recognise a classical figure and still feel the closeness of a room full of people.
The grape detail also connects this painting with other early works. Fruit appears in Bacchus and Basket of Fruit, but its job changes. In The Musicians it gives Cupid a casual action and helps fold him into the group. A similar object can serve different purposes when Caravaggio changes the people around it.[1][2][3]
Models, Likenesses and a Possible Self-Portrait
The figures are recognisably different from one another. The Met emphasises individual models and identifies the second boy from the right as a self-portrait of Caravaggio. That identification is part of the museum's current interpretation; it is not a dated sitting record or a basis for naming every other youth.[1]
The question of likeness has often drawn attention because Caravaggio's people seem so close to life. Their individuality can coexist with a designed allegory. As the Met's audio curator explains, different models may have posed separately and been joined in one composition. The result feels like a social gathering, but its truth is painterly rather than photographic.[1]
Even if one face is Caravaggio's, the painting is not simply an autobiographical portrait of a musical evening. Cupid, instruments, score and the close grouping make it an image about music and the experience around it. A proposed self-portrait adds one possible layer; it does not replace the work's broader subject.
Del Monte's Household and Roman Musical Culture
Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte was an important patron in Caravaggio's early Roman career. The Met places the work soon after Caravaggio entered his household and links it with Baglione's account. The cardinal's support connected the artist to a circle in which music, poetry and painting could be enjoyed together.[1][4]
That context helps explain why a picture of musical preparation could be substantial rather than incidental. The painting offers a patron the pleasure of recognising instruments and performance, while Cupid and the arrangement of figures invite a more abstract reading. It is both close to contemporary life and open to cultivated interpretation.
Franca Trinchieri Camiz's study of the household gives the musical context firmer documentary edges. She notes Del Monte's friendship with the composer Emilio de' Cavalieri, the dedication of music to the cardinal, and his offices connected with Roman church music, including responsibility for the singers of the papal chapel. A letter by Cavalieri dated December 1599 reports that Pietro Montoya, a Spanish singer in that chapel, was staying with Del Monte. These records establish a household involved with working musicians as well as collecting pictures of them. They do not identify any of Caravaggio's painted youths as Montoya or show that a particular rehearsal is depicted.[7]
The same study cites Vincenzo Giustiniani's later account of a camerino decorated with paintings for intimate music-making. It offers a useful comparison for what a private music picture might do: guests could look at painted instruments and singers while hearing real ones nearby. Giustiniani was a neighbour and collector, not a witness who specified where The Musicians hung in Del Monte's home. A possible mode of viewing should not be turned into this painting's documented installation history.[7]
The object record dates it to 1597. Older catalogues and records can differ, but the Met's current date places the canvas among the early half-length pictures, before the large public Matthew paintings. The artist guide follows that shift in scale and audience without claiming that one commission replaced all private work at once.[1][5]
There is no dated contract for this canvas that pins its making to one year. The Met's 1990 exhibition catalogue assigned it about 1595; the museum's current object record gives 1597. Both place it in the early del Monte period, but the difference is a reminder that the date is a scholarly estimate. Baglione's relative sequence—after Caravaggio entered the household—does not by itself resolve the exact calendar year.[1][6]
Can the Music Be Identified?
The score and instruments make the scene look unusually specific, but they do not allow a secure reconstruction of a performance. A Metropolitan Museum study of Caravaggio's musical pictures explains that the notation in the part-books of The Musicians is no longer legible enough to identify a particular piece. The painting can therefore support a discussion of musical practice, but naming a precise madrigal as the work being rehearsed would claim more than the surviving surface permits.[6]
The Met catalogue gives a reason for this limit: the painting has suffered substantial losses and restoration. The violin and turned page of music were reconstructed with help from a later copy, and the surviving scores cannot be read. The same study notes reworked drapery on the lute player, a sign that Caravaggio refined the group rather than simply recording posed figures in one unaltered pass. A reader looking at a crisp modern reproduction may not realise how much of the visible detail has a conservation history.[6]
The catalogue describes the damage in specific terms: the lute strings are largely lost, the shadow of the player's hand has become indistinct, and even the better-preserved head and still life have lost subtle modelling. It also notes a 1675 inventory saying the canvas had been glued to a wooden support, which may have contributed to its condition. These are reasons to distinguish what survives from what a restorer reconstructed. They are also why an apparently precise detail in a modern image cannot automatically serve as evidence for an original instrument, score or gesture.[6]
The same study considers the musical setting of del Monte's circle and the possibility of an accompanied solo voice. That is a historical comparison, not a transcription of this painted score. It helps explain why the youths might be gathered with separate musical tasks: a player tunes, another reads and a violin waits. The distinction matters because the picture's credible details can tempt a viewer into treating it as an exact record of one evening.[1][6]
Del Monte's support for performance makes music a plausible subject for a painting made within his household. Cupid still keeps the scene in the realm of allegory. The musical objects are at once real things a patron could recognise and signs within a deliberately staged image. Neither role cancels the other.[1][6]
There is a way to explore the sound without pretending to recover the lost score. In 2015 the Met displayed The Musicians beside musical instruments similar to those shown in paintings of the period and offered recordings of their sound. That was a modern interpretive comparison, not evidence of the exact instruments, performers or music heard when this canvas was first viewed. The distinction lets a visitor ask how a lute or violin might shape a room's sound while retaining the limit imposed by the damaged notation.[6][8]
This evidence also prevents a common mix-up with Caravaggio's two Lute Player compositions. A Metropolitan Museum music study reports legible part-books in those pictures and identifies pieces associated with Jacob Arcadelt, Francesco Layolle and Jacques Berchem. The names belong to the Lute Players, not to an identified score in The Musicians. Comparing the works is revealing precisely because the music can be read in one case and has been lost in the other.[6][7]
Composition, Light and the Viewer's Position
The group fills much of the canvas, leaving little architectural explanation. Bodies and instruments overlap. The lute's rounded form, the score's flat surface, faces and bare skin give the eye several different textures to follow. The viewer is near enough to imagine joining the group, yet there is no vacant place clearly offered as a seat.
The light is comparatively open and gentle beside some of Caravaggio's later chapel pictures. It makes faces, shoulders and musical objects visible across the group rather than driving a single isolated beam through darkness. This difference matters: the painting's drama lies in expectation and relation, not a violent event.[1]
We can also notice how the composition prevents one fixed centre. A viewer may start with the lute, then move to the score, then discover Cupid. Each route changes the first account of the picture. The painting makes the work of looking resemble the work of listening to an ensemble: attention passes between contributors.
Titles, Copies and the Object's Identity
The Musicians is the Met's current title. The older title Concert of Youths refers to the same work. Baglione's “concert” wording helps explain it, but it is not evidence for an additional Caravaggio canvas.[1]
The Met's object number is 52.81. It acquired the painting in 1952 through the Rogers Fund. These identifiers distinguish the canvas from reproductions or related depictions of music. The museum marks its object image as Public Domain and makes it available through Open Access.[1]
An earlier Metropolitan catalogue reconstructs part of the picture's journey after Cardinal del Monte. The 8 May 1628 sale grouped The Musicians with a Caravaggio painting of a carafe of flowers, now lost, and a music picture by Bernardino Licinio. Those were three distinct objects in one transaction. A 1634 report about a Caravaggio picture allegedly bought from the Vigna Ludovisi and given by Antonio Barberini to the French marshal de Créqui is the basis for a possible Barberini link. The 1638 de Créqui inventory is stronger evidence for the painting's French presence. It later passed through collections associated with Richelieu and the Duchesse d'Aiguillon. The dated records should not turn the proposed intermediate owner into a certain step.[6]
A plan to copy the painting was recorded while the original was still with del Monte. Music historian Dinko Fabris quotes a 20 February 1615 letter in which Giulio Mancini told his brother Deifebo of arrangements to copy the cardinal's Musica along with The Cardsharps and The Fortune Teller. The letter indicates access for a professional copyist was being organised; it does not turn the copy into another painting by Caravaggio. The identity and present location of the copy associated with Mancini's arrangement remain unproved; a later version used by restorers as a visual aid should not be silently equated with it.[6][10]
The documented early chain does not provide a continuous route to New York. Research published by Nicholas Hall follows the modern recovery through correspondence between the connoisseur Denis Mahon and Met curator Theodore Rousseau. Dealer David Carritt encountered the picture in the English collection of Surgeon Captain W. G. Thwaytes in 1951; Mahon connected it with the work described by Caravaggio's biographers and published his attribution in January 1952. Hall cites letters about its inspection, proposed acquisition and voyage to New York that May. This sequence explains how an old musical picture became a recognised Caravaggio and entered the Met, while leaving the intervening ownership after the seventeenth-century French records incompletely documented. The 1952 accession is firm; the missing stretch should remain a gap, not be filled with a guessed transfer.[1][9]
Hall adds one documented stage immediately before that recovery: Thwaytes bought the darkened picture from Joe Cookson of Kendal in 1947 for £100. Carritt then brought it to London, where Sebastian Isepp cleaned it before Mahon's published identification and the Met's purchase. The 1947 transaction narrows the modern gap; it does not supply the missing owners between the seventeenth-century French collection and Cookson. Hall's cited 1952 correspondence also shows that the painting crossed the Atlantic by ship, correcting a later anecdote that it had flown to New York.[9]
For related early work, compare The Cardsharps and Bacchus. The paintings directory gives the broader route through objects and versions.
Explore the Caravaggio collection
| Name | Date | Type |
|---|---|---|
| Adoration of the Shepherds by Caravaggio: The Messina Nativity | 1608–09; precise order relative to Resurrection of Lazarus remains unresolved | Artwork |
| Amor Victorious by Caravaggio | 1601–02 in the Berlin owner record | Artwork |
| Bacchus by Caravaggio: The Uffizi Painting | about 1598, according to the Uffizi | Artwork |
| Basket of Fruit by Caravaggio | after 1597, probably around the turn of the seventeenth century, according to the Ambrosiana | Artwork |
| Boy Bitten by a Lizard: Caravaggio's London Painting | about 1594–95 in the National Gallery's current catalogue; URL suffix “1596” is inherited | Artwork |
| Boy Bitten by a Lizard: The Florence Version Attributed to Caravaggio | disputed; Longhi's catalogue record preserves historical 1592–93 and other proposed ranges, including c.1597 | Artwork |
| Boy Peeling Fruit by Caravaggio: The Royal Collection Painting | about 1592–93 in the owner's current exhibition record | Artwork |
| Boy Peeling Fruit in Florence: A Derivation from Caravaggio | — | Artwork |
| Boy with a Basket of Fruit by Caravaggio | about 1595 in the Galleria Borghese catalogue | Artwork |
| Caravaggio Paintings in Rome: Churches, Museums and a Practical Route | — | Guide |
| Caravaggio Quotes: What the Documents Actually Record | — | Guide |
| Caravaggio's Lute Player: The Del Monte Painting Once Shown at the Met | about 1596–97 in the Met catalogue | Artwork |
| Caravaggio's Painting Technique: Grounds, Incisions, Revisions and Light | — | Guide |
| Christ at the Column by Caravaggio: The Rouen Flagellation | c.1606 in the owner caption; owner prose gives 1606–07 | Artwork |
| Christ on the Mount of Olives by Caravaggio: The Lost Berlin Painting | — | Artwork |
| Conversion on the Way to Damascus by Caravaggio | about 1601 in the Roma Capitale church record | Artwork |
| Crowning with Thorns by Caravaggio: The Vienna Painting | about 1603 in the 2019 KHM record; “1607” is an inherited URL suffix | Artwork |
| Crowning with Thorns in Prato: Attributed to Caravaggio | about 1602–03 in the collection presentation | Artwork |
| David with the Head of Goliath by Caravaggio: The Borghese Painting | 1606–07 or 1609–10 in the Galleria Borghese catalogue; the later Naples period is favoured by many scholars, while the owner keeps the question open | Artwork |
| David with the Head of Goliath by Caravaggio: The Prado Painting | about 1600 in Prado material; “1599” survives only in the legacy URL | Artwork |
| David with the Head of Goliath by Caravaggio: The Vienna Painting | about 1600–01 in the KHM's 2019 exhibition record; “1607” is a legacy route label | Artwork |
| Did Caravaggio Make Drawings? What Survives and What Paintings Reveal | — | Guide |
| Ecce Homo: Caravaggio's Madrid Rediscovery and the Genoa Painting | — | Artwork |
| John the Baptist in Caravaggio's Paintings: A Guide to the Different Versions | — | Artwork |
| Judith Beheading Holofernes by Caravaggio | beginning of the seventeenth century in the owning museum's account; about 1599–1600 in the Kimbell's 2025 loan label; around 1602 in one specialist catalogue | Artwork |
| Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto: Caravaggio's Ludovisi Ceiling | about 1597; the archive connects the work with Cardinal del Monte's 1597 commission | Artwork |
| Madonna and Child with Saint Anne by Caravaggio: The Palafrenieri Altarpiece | 1605 in the Galleria Borghese object field; completed and delivered by 8 April 1606 | Artwork |
| Madonna of Loreto by Caravaggio: The Pilgrims at Sant'Agostino | broadly c.1604–06; institutional records differ slightly in their starting year | Artwork |
| Madonna of the Rosary by Caravaggio: The Vienna Altarpiece | around 1603 in the Kunsthistorisches Museum's object record | Artwork |
| Martha and Mary Magdalene by Caravaggio: The Detroit Painting | about 1598 in the Detroit Institute of Arts record | Artwork |
| Medusa by Caravaggio: The Uffizi Painted Shield | 1596–98 in the Uffizi's virtual exhibition; specialist research reports the shield delivered to the Medici wardrobe by 7 September 1598 | Artwork |
| Narcissus, Attributed to Caravaggio | dependent on attribution; the Zeri catalogue gives a broad 1610–50 range under Spadarino | Artwork |
| Nativity with Saint Francis and Saint Lawrence: Caravaggio's Missing Painting | somewhere in 1600–09 in the parliamentary report; a specific 1609 execution and place remain debated | Artwork |
| Penitent Mary Magdalene by Caravaggio | 1597 in the owner's catalogue, during Caravaggio's early Roman activity | Artwork |
| Portrait of a Courtesan: Caravaggio's Lost Berlin Portrait | Berlin's data field says c.1590, while its own text compares a Caravaggio work of c.1598; precise date unresolved | Artwork |
| Portrait of Alof de Wignacourt and His Page by Caravaggio | — | Artwork |
| Portrait of Fra Antonio Martelli? Caravaggio's Pitti Knight of Malta | 1608 in the Restituzioni object heading; within Caravaggio's Malta period | Artwork |
| Portrait of Maffeo Barberini: The Seated Corsini Painting | c.1596–97 in the national catalogue | Artwork |
| Portrait of Monsignor Maffeo Barberini: Caravaggio's Newly Acquired Painting | around the late 1590s / age thirty; “1598” in the inherited address is approximate, not an exact document date | Artwork |
| Portrait of Pope Paul V: A Caravaggio Attribution and a Borghese Copy | — | Artwork |
| Prints After Caravaggio: Who Made Them and What They Show | — | Guide |
| Reclining Saint John the Baptist: A Disputed Caravaggio Attribution | often proposed for the artist's final years; the later museum list does not give a precise year. | Artwork |
| Rest on the Flight into Egypt by Caravaggio | about 1597 in the owner's catalogue | Artwork |
| Saint Catherine of Alexandria by Caravaggio: The Thyssen Painting | about 1598–99 in the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza catalogue | Artwork |
| Saint Francis in Meditation by Caravaggio: The Cremona Painting | 1603–06 in the owner account; c.1605–06 in a KHM exhibition caption | Artwork |
| Saint Francis in Prayer: Caravaggio's Carpineto Painting | 1606 in a 2016–17 exhibition work list | Artwork |
| Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy by Caravaggio | c.1595–96 in the owner wall text | Artwork |
| Saint Jerome in Meditation: Caravaggio's Montserrat Painting | 1605 in the owner record; an owner publication reports scholarship placing it about 1605–06 | Artwork |
| Saint Jerome Writing by Caravaggio: The Borghese Painting | c.1606 in the owner catalogue; the “1605” URL suffix is inherited | Artwork |
| Saint Jerome Writing by Caravaggio: The Malta Painting | around 1607–08; foundation dates Malaspina's commission to 1608 | Artwork |
| Saint John in the Wilderness at Toledo Cathedral | exact 1598 not established by the cited cathedral account. | Artwork |
| Saint John the Baptist at Galleria Corsini, Rome | about 1606 in the national record; older proposals ranged from the late 1590s onward. | Artwork |
| Saint John the Baptist at the Capitoline Museums, Rome | 1602. | Artwork |
| Saint John the Baptist at the Galleria Borghese | 1609–10 in the current Borghese record. | Artwork |
| Saint John the Baptist at the Spring: The Bonello Painting in Malta | early seventeenth century in the institutional account; a precise 1608 is not established there. | Artwork |
| Saint Matthew and the Angel: Caravaggio's Lost First Altarpiece | — | Artwork |
| Salome Receives the Head of John the Baptist: Caravaggio's London Painting | about 1609–10, likely late Naples period in the Gallery's account | Artwork |
| Salome with the Head of John the Baptist: Caravaggio's Madrid Painting | — | Artwork |
| Sleeping Cupid by Caravaggio: The Painting Made in Malta | about 1608, Malta period | Artwork |
| Still Life with Fruit on a Stone Ledge: Is It by Caravaggio? | — | Artwork |
| Supper at Emmaus (1606): Caravaggio's Brera Painting | — | Artwork |
| The Annunciation by Caravaggio in Nancy | c.1607–10 in the collection record; 1608–10 in the museum's restoration account | Artwork |
| The Basel Saint John the Baptist: Once Labelled Caravaggio, Now Maíno | about 1608–10 in that schedule, rather than the legacy URL's 1600. | Artwork |
| The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist by Caravaggio | about 1608; installed in the Oratory on 29 August 1608 | Artwork |
| The Burial of Saint Lucy by Caravaggio in Syracuse | 1608, during Caravaggio's Syracuse stay | Artwork |
| The Calling of Saint Matthew by Caravaggio | about 1599–1600 | Artwork |
| The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew by Caravaggio | about 1602–04 in the Trust's object text | Artwork |
| The Cardsharps by Caravaggio | about 1596–97 in the Kimbell's current object record | Artwork |
| The Conversion of Saint Paul: Caravaggio's Odescalchi Panel | commissioned in 1600; painted around 1600–01 | Artwork |
| The Crucifixion of Saint Andrew by Caravaggio | 1606–07 | Artwork |
| The Crucifixion of Saint Peter by Caravaggio | about 1601 | Artwork |
| The Death of the Virgin by Caravaggio | commissioned 1601; completed late 1605 or early 1606, according to the Louvre | Artwork |
| The Denial of Saint Peter by Caravaggio | 1610 | Artwork |
| The Doria Pamphilj Saint John the Baptist: A Second Youth with a Ram | linked compositionally to the Capitoline 1602 picture; an exact production year for this canvas is not established by the owner pages used here. | Artwork |
| The Entombment of Christ by Caravaggio: The Vatican Deposition | about 1600–04 in Vatican Museums publication material | Artwork |
| The Flagellation of Christ by Caravaggio: The Capodimonte Altarpiece | around 1607, in the first Naples period | Artwork |
| The Fortune Teller by Caravaggio: The Louvre Version and Its Roman Counterpart | — | Artwork |
| The Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist by Caravaggio | early 1600s in the Met catalogue; no more exact owner date asserted here | Artwork |
| The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio | about 1601 in the SPSG presentation | Artwork |
| The Inspiration of Saint Matthew by Caravaggio | usually 1602; also catalogued 1602–03, for the installed final altarpiece | Artwork |
| The Lute Player by Caravaggio: The Hermitage Painting | about 1596 in the Hermitage collection publication; the Hermitage Friends restoration page gives about 1595–96 | Artwork |
| The Magdalen in Ecstasy: Caravaggio, Copies and a Disputed Original | — | Artwork |
| The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew by Caravaggio | 1599–1600; unveiled with The Calling in 1600 | Artwork |
| The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula by Caravaggio | — | Artwork |
| The Musicians by Caravaggio | 1597 | Artwork |
| The Resurrection of Lazarus by Caravaggio in Messina | 1609; delivered 10 June 1609 in the owner account | Artwork |
| The Sacrifice of Isaac by Bartolomeo Cavarozzi: A Former Caravaggio Attribution | about 1615–17 in the Nicholas Hall catalogue; “1598” is an inherited URL label, not the accepted date | Artwork |
| The Sacrifice of Isaac by Caravaggio: The Uffizi Painting | about 1603 in the Uffizi catalogue | Artwork |
| The Seven Works of Mercy by Caravaggio | 1606–07, according to the Pio Monte | Artwork |
| The Supper at Emmaus by Caravaggio: The London Painting | 1601 | Artwork |
| The Taking of Christ by Caravaggio | 1602 | Artwork |
| The Toulouse *Judith Beheading Holofernes*: A Caravaggio Attribution Debate | c.1606–07 if identified with the recorded Naples work; that identification is debated | Artwork |
| Young Sick Bacchus by Caravaggio | about 1595 in the Galleria Borghese catalogue | Artwork |
| Youth with a Ram: Why Caravaggio's Saint John Looks So Unusual | — | Artwork |
No matching pages found.
Discussion
Share a close observation about The Musicians by Caravaggio or a source that clarifies its history.
Which detail changes your reading?
Is there a collection record or document worth comparing?
What remains uncertain?
Join the Conversation
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is The Musicians?
It belongs to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, object number 52.81. The museum's current collection page gives display information.[1]
When was it painted?
The Met dates it to 1597 and connects it with Caravaggio's early work for Cardinal del Monte.[1]
Are the musicians performing?
The figures appear to be preparing: a lute is being tuned, music is being examined and another instrument rests to one side. The moment before performance is part of the painting's subject.[1]
Why is Cupid in the painting?
His wings identify him as the classical god of love. The Met says his presence makes the work an allegory representing Music, alongside its observation of real-seeming performers.[1]
Is Caravaggio in the picture?
The Met identifies the second boy from the right as a self-portrait. It is best treated as the museum's interpretation, not as an independently documented sitting.[1]
References
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Musicians, 52.81.
- Gallerie degli Uffizi, Bacchus.
- Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Basket of Fruit.
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Caravaggio and his followers.
- Roma Capitale, San Luigi dei Francesi.
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, A Caravaggio Rediscovered: The Lute Player, discussion of music in Caravaggio's early pictures.
- Franca Trinchieri Camiz, “Music and Painting in Cardinal del Monte's Household,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 26, comparison of the damaged Musicians notation and the legible Lute Player part-books.
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Painting Music in the Age of Caravaggio,” exhibition overview, 2015.
- Nicholas Hall, “Caravaggio in America — Part 2,” modern rediscovery and Mahon–Rousseau correspondence.
- Dinko Fabris, “Il terzo Suonatore di liuto di Caravaggio,” specialist study hosted by the University of Basilicata, quoting Giulio Mancini's 20 February 1615 letter about copying del Monte's Musica.
- Annotated image source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Musicians, collection image, high-resolution reproduction used for the annotated details.
