Who Is Caravaggio's Interest In Art?

Musicians is a painting which was created by the great Italian artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio in 1595. It is currently held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. This masterpiece is an example of the Italian Baroque style of painting, and was crafted as oil on canvas with dimensions of 36 1/4 x 46 5/8 in 36 1/4 x 46 5/8 inches. The painting was created for Caravaggio’s first patron Cardinal Francesco del Monte who had a great interest in music. The picture displays four young boys dressed in classic, roman style white togas. They are playing instruments (one has a Lute), singing and reading music. A violin appears in the foreground that is not being played, almost as if the artist is inviting the viewer to join in the musical rendition. All of the figures seem to have rosy cheeks, one clearly has red hair, giving them a certain “cherubic” look. By today’s standards, their appearance could be interpreted as extremely feminine, but for Caravaggio’s time in history it was a common look. The fourth boy in the back left corner has what appear to be wings, and there are a group of arrows emerging from behind his right shoulder. Both of these symbols are
suggestive of Cupid, the mythical cherub that brings the joy and sadness of love to humans. He is eating grapes, and appears to look the most like a girl of all four. The presence of this Cupid-like figure sets the scene as one of the boys playing and singing of love and romance. The boy in the middle facing forward with the most amount of light appearing on him is tuning his lute while having a sad, nostalgic or faraway look on his face. He is the dominant figure in the composition and almost appears to be crying, maybe as a result of the sad lyrics of their song. It is believed that the second boy from the right, facing the viewer, is a self-portrait of the artist himself. The most enigmatic is the boy on the far right with his back to us and his face mostly turned away. Most of the colors in this painting are subdued, earthy tones of brown, tan, and beige which blend together nicely with the boys’ skin tones.
The one exception is the red sash worn by the central character, perhaps intentionally, the boy with the obviously red hair. While his sash is not a bright red, and so harmonizes with the earth tones, it is enough to draw the viewer’s eye to the Lute player as the main character. Parts of the canvas appear to be damaged in the background, as the different shades of the light brown and charcoal black vary unnaturally. Considering the painting is in poor condition because of past restorations and has a significant amount of paint loss, it makes it difficult to read the music manuscripts so we cannot really determine the type of music being
played.