Couple Making Music with a Lute and a Flute 1658 - 1677

Curator: My first thought? Elegance, filtered through time. There’s a dreamy quality here that’s totally bewitching. Editor: Wallerant Vaillant created this artwork, entitled “Couple Making Music with a Lute and a Flute,” sometime between 1658 and 1677. It is an engraving housed right here in the Rijksmuseum. Note how Vaillant, characteristic of the Baroque, plays with the distribution of light and shadow. Curator: Shadow is right! Makes the music feel secretive, doesn’t it? And look at the dress of the lute player, practically overflowing, you just know it feels so silky to the touch. Like music you could wear. I wonder what the melody is like? Something tender I bet. Editor: Observe also how Vaillant crafts an implicit narrative here. Semiotically, the flute, lute, and musical score combine to suggest cultivated harmony. However, consider too how each character is subtly isolated from the others despite being bound together in this artistic moment. Curator: Isolated… That's heavy! Is that why the dog looks so eager for attention, hovering beneath the music table? It’s the only one that's making proper eye contact with us, like, “Hey, don't forget about me in all this fancy art stuff!" I feel that on a spiritual level. Editor: Indeed. Even the composition's stark vertical lines—see the wall on the left contrasted against the openness of the window on the right—underscore this simultaneous connection and division of space and characters. Curator: Vaillant clearly invites us to interpret the emotions playing out just beyond the surface. As if this wasn't merely a picture, but a portal to a moment. The image lingers with the echoes of a song that wasn't sung and a connection we might just miss, if we aren't careful. Editor: Yes, this offers much beyond the immediate. Thank you for sharing your particular intuitive sensibilities.