Lorenzo Costa  Ferrara 1460 – Mantua 1535
NG 2486 
A Concert

Giorgia Mancini, Nicholas Penny, 2016

Extracted from:
Giorgia Mancini and Nicholas Penny, The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings, Volume III: Bologna and Ferrara (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2018).

c. 1488–90

Oil on wood, 96.8 × 77.6 cm

Support

The panel is composed of two boards, probably poplar, with the grain vertical to the picture. The join runs vertically down the centre of the composition, through the lute player’s face. The panel has a slight serpentine warp and its thickness varies from 1.5 to 1.8 cm. The painted surface measures approximately 95.3 × 76.2 cm and is surrounded by an unpainted border, which may have been broader because the edges of the panel are likely to have been slightly trimmed.

On the back of the panel the join has been reinforced with two butterfly insets. These are not original. Two horizontal battens were formerly attached but were removed in 1954.

An inscription in ink on the back, probably dating from the nineteenth century, reads: ‘Scuola Ferrarese capo d’opera di Ercole Grandi’.

Materials and technique

The panel has a ground of gesso (calcium sulphate) bound in glue, over which there is a thin, off‐white priming consisting mainly of colourless powdered glass and some lead white.¹ The slightly raised edges of the gesso ground, a little inside the edges of the panel, indicate that it was prepared and painted in conjunction with an engaged frame.

Infrared reflectography clearly reveals a simple outline drawing for the composition but no hatching or other indications of volume or the fall of light. The lines the artist chose to draw, and their constrained and somewhat stylised character, strongly suggest that the underdrawing is based on a transferred design, probably a tracing. The underdrawing that is visible in the infrared image was made in a liquid medium. The short, broken lines have sometimes pooled or beaded, in some places creating a somewhat spotty effect that has been misinterpreted as evidence of pouncing. This effect is probably caused by the underdrawing being on top of the priming.

Although the paint layers generally follow the underdrawing quite closely, small changes were made in many areas during painting. The most significant of these can be found in the head of the female figure (fig. 1), which was originally turned slightly more towards the lute player, with the tip of her nose and the corner of her mouth drawn further to the right and her eyes directed towards him. A veil covered her forehead and hung down over her right shoulder. The fine net drawn tightly over the back of her head had a different pattern, with a broad decorated border, and there were also bands passing over her head, from front to back. Small changes were also made to her hands and her clothing. Both X‐radiography and infrared reflectography show that the man on the right was at first painted with a slightly different kind of costume, which had an upper garment that had a higher collar and was more open at the neck, revealing a triangle of white shirt. The recorder has more of a mouthpiece in the underdrawing and the headpiece of the rebec was also drawn larger. The blade of the small knife in the sheath attached to the belt of the central singing figure is also visible.

The paint medium has been identified as linseed oil in the purple sleeve of the figure on the right and in the greenish parapet, and walnut oil in the yellow highlights on the sleeve of the woman and in the black background.²

The flesh is painted with a mixture of lead white, lead‐tin yellow, vermilion and red lake, with black pigment added to the shadows. The purplish‐blue coat of the lute player contains azurite and red lake, applied on a brownish underlayer which, since it contains very little lead white, would probably have dried slowly, causing the drying cracks in the paint above. The red doublet is painted with red lake and finely dispersed vermilion in the darker areas, with the addition of some lead‐tin yellow in the lighter areas. The black laces of the doublet have highlights in yellow and white, perhaps indicating metal threads.

Verdigris mixed with some lead white, lead‐tin yellow and a little black was used for the green dress of the woman on the left. The knot pattern embroidered on the front of the bodice of the dress (fig. 3), composed of vermilion, black and lead white, is redder than the gold threads on the sleeve and the gold collar and brooch, and is therefore possibly intended to represent copper thread. The dull purple paint of the underdress is composed of red lake, lead white and black, with no blue pigment. The cloth of gold sleeves have a brownish‐red base colour (composed of red earth, vermilion, lead‐tin yellow, black, lead white), with a damask pattern painted with red lake. The highlights of the gold thread are painted with lead‐tin yellow (fig. 4).³

The plum‐coloured coat of the singer on the right is painted with a mixture composed mainly of red lake with some lead white, a little azurite and vermilion, and colourless powdered glass.⁴ It has a dark underlayer (coal black, a little red lake, vermilion, lead‐tin yellow, lead white and colourless powdered glass),⁵ which appears, from the infrared reflectograms, to be modelled according to the light and shade of the drapery. The green of the garment under the coat is painted with a mixture of verdigris and lead‐tin yellow.

The marble parapet is composed of two layers of paint, a paler brownish underpaint (lead white, red lake and a brownish pigment) and a greenish upper layer containing lead white, very large particles of verdigris, and a little red lake and lead‐tin yellow. The browner shadows of the lute contain lead‐tin yellow and large particles of red lake. The strings of the lute, where they pass over the neck (but not over the main body of the instrument), have been ruled and incised into the wet paint. The X‐radiograph shows that the rebec and recorder were painted over the parapet, although they were not afterthoughts since they were included in the underdrawing. Incisions in the paint indicate that at least a preliminary layer for the parapet was painted before the books. The books were also indicated in the underdrawing, although this is less visible (one line below the bottom edge of the lower book seems to be part of the underdrawing, but was not followed).

The black background was painted with coal black mixed with some verdigris and colourless powdered glass.⁶

Conservation

In 1930 the panel was treated for woodworm. As noted above, two battens were removed from the back of the panel in 1954. The paint has a history of flaking, for which it has been treated several times. The panel was treated and the painting was cleaned and restored in 1980–1.

Condition

The painting is in good condition, apart from some damage at the edges and small losses, notably in the cheek and nose of the central figure and in the woman’s hair and right hand. Extensive drying cracks are visible in the black paint of the background, in the purplish blue coat of the central figure, and in the woman’s purple underdress. This is best explained by variations in the rates at which the different levels of paint dried. The areas containing lead‐tin yellow – the flesh tones, the green draperies, the stone parapet, the lute, and the gold threads in the woman’s sleeve – have a lumpy texture caused by the formation of large agglomerations of lead soap (fig. 4). The woman’s fine black necklace is somewhat worn.

Subject

The subject was admirably described by Jacopo Alessandro Calvi in 1780, when the painting, generally known ‘La Musica’, was in the Hercolani collection in Bologna:⁷ [page 57] In the centre we see a young man of pleasing countenance with an open mouth which shows how he is loosening up his voice to the measure of a song, touching as he does so a stringed instrument, while a pretty woman, gracefully attired, leaning with her hand on the shoulder of the aforementioned youth, is also singing; on the other side, albeit slightly behind, another spirited young man who accompanies them may be seen, and these figures are only half‐length. In front of them is placed a parapet, scattered upon which may be seen some books with musical notations and some instruments.⁸

The central and foremost figure, the young man who is singing and playing a lute, wears a purplish blue coat over a red doublet, which is open at the chest and arms to reveal a white chemise. A leather sheath in the shape of a purse, from which the hilt of a small, short knife projects, is attached to his belt. As noted above, in infrared images the blade is visible.

To the man’s right is a young woman, who rests her left hand on his shoulder and her right on the parapet. She is also singing, and the fingers of both her hands appear to keep time with the music. She wears a green dress, pleated in the front of the skirt and open at the bodice to reveal a purple undergarment. A fine white chemise, just visible at the neckline, escapes (by design) at the shoulders of the dress, where the gold damask sleeves are attached with very fine laces. Also attached to the dress is a gold collar. This is studded with pearls, which surround circular motifs enclosing quatrefoils that contain red, blue and green prong‐set stones. Across the opening of the bodice, the collar becomes a sort of chain consisting of four narrower plaques of gold, identically ornamented. At the centre of this chain there is an oval brooch with a single pendant pearl (fig. 5). The young woman also wears a fine black necklace. The back of her head is covered by a fine net trinzale, with a pattern of small white quatrefoils, which is held in place by a lenza across her forehead. Her face is framed by her long hair, which is drawn down over her ears but with some loose locks falling over her shoulders – an arrangement that would be hard to contrive unless the hair were tied under the chin, as it sometimes was in north Italy at this date, to judge from other paintings, most famously in Leonardo da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine.

The man to the right and somewhat behind is also singing (fig. 6); his left hand, which rests on the parapet, also appears to keep time with the music. He wears a plum‐coloured coat over a green damask doublet, which is visible at cuff and collar. The doublet is unlaced at the collar, exposing a white chemise. White fur or feathers are visible above his left shoulder, presumably the ornament of a hat or the lining of a cloak, and this hat or cloak must be attached to the band that passes over his chest, which he seems to hold with his right hand.⁹

On the right of the parapet, an open manuscript part‐book is placed on top of a closed book (fig. 7). On the parapet in front of the woman there is a rebec, slightly projecting over the edge, with a bow lying across it and, on top of this, a recorder. The musical instrument being played by the man in the centre may seem to be unusual in shape on account of its foreshortening, but it corresponds in size to the teardrop‐shaped, five‐course lute of the late fifteenth century; its strings, the position of the frets and the decorative rosette are very carefully painted. Less attention was given to the other instruments and to the musical notation. The way the singers are tapping the ledge to mark the time may indicate that the song is a rather complicated one, perhaps a polyphonic madrigal or a frottola.¹⁰ Early frottole were three‐part compositions for soprano, tenor and bass accompanied by a lute. When an alto line was added, it was suitable for instruments such as the rebec, here depicted on the ledge.

We recognise immediately that all three figures are singing, and the beauty of the music is also suggested by their expressions, for which reason Costa avoids the distortion that the open mouths and raised brows of a singer can impart to a handsome face. Luca della Robbia (1400–1482) had first achieved this half a century earlier in his marble cantoria in the Duomo in Florence, and several painters had emulated him in their depictions of angels singing.¹¹ Costa himself depicted such musical angels elsewhere (see p. 98).

This picture seems to be the earliest example of a secular genre that was to develop in north Italy, especially in Venice, in the early sixteenth century, reflecting the popularity, among the educated and the affluent, of singing from a book (cantare a libro).¹² Two other examples of this type of painting dating from the sixteenth century are to be found in the National Gallery (NG 2903 [fig. 8] and NG 3). Such paintings may show two to six or more figures, but usually three or four, and in many cases the central figure plays a stringed instrument – as is the case in NG 2486. Singing is also frequent, as are [page 58] sheets of music and part‐books. And it is not uncommon for the musicians to be represented performing with a ledge in front of them.¹³ Although such paintings are now generally given the title of ‘Concert’, it should be noted that in the sixteenth century they were not so described.¹⁴ As there is no audience either present or implied, the performance depicted need not be considered as a public one.¹⁵ The genre, which can be said to have been invented by Costa with this painting, continued to flourish in the seventeenth century, especially in the work of Dutch followers of Caravaggio, notably Baburen (1595–1624), Honthorst (1592–1656; fig. 9) and ter Brugghen (1588–1629). Two fine examples by the latter are in the National Gallery (NG 6347 and NG 6483).

It has been proposed that Costa represents an actual event, perhaps even a family performance of the kind recorded in contemporary correspondence.¹⁶ In a well‐known letter addressed to Isabella d’Este in 1491, Captain Galeazzo da Sanseverino (1458–1525) reported how he had sung with the Duchess Beatrice d’Este (1475–1497) and the court fool Diodato ‘more than twenty‐five songs well suited for three voices, that is, Diodato the tenor’, the captain ‘sometimes the bass and sometimes the soprano, and the duchess the soprano’.¹⁷ In a letter of 1495 Duke Ercole I d’Este wrote about the ‘great pleasure’ he took in hearing his son Sigismondo and ‘Don Julio, and in singing together with them’.¹⁸ Another example of musical activity at court is found in a letter of 1499, which records that Ercole’s sister, Isabella d’Este, known to be an excellent singer, was training to perform with her brother Alfonso on the ‘viola’ during his wedding celebrations.¹⁹ Such documents certainly indicate that Costa’s painting depicts something that was familiar and delightful to his patrons, but this hardly means that it records a specific occasion.

Nevertheless, the sharp particularity of style that distinguishes Costa’s painting from later examples of the genre has suggested to some scholars that this is a group portrait. In support of this view, there is also Vasari’s claim that Costa painted, in the Palazzo di S. Sebastiano at Mantua, ‘the Marquess Isabella, portrayed from life, together with many ladies who sing accompanied by various sounds, making a sweet harmony’.²⁰ And there is also a painting by Costa of the Bentivoglio family (fig. 11), inscribed as a group portrait, which has stimulated speculation concerning the possible identities of the figures represented in NG 2486 (for which see the Appendix below).

One eminent musicologist has suggested that, since the instruments other than the lute are inexactly rendered, and the manuscript part‐book on the ledge is barely legible and shows ‘an arrangement of notational forms that make no coherent musical sense’, it is likely that the painting is primarily (but not only) intended as a symbolic representation of Harmony and Concord rather than a representation of actual practice.²¹ One problem in discussing the subject of this painting may be a general imprecision in the use of the terms ‘symbol’ and ‘allegory’. A scene of music‐making can of course illustrate or stand for Music, just as a scene of figures ice‐skating can represent Winter, and such pictures are sometimes called allegories or symbolic pictures although the action represented is naturalistic. Even if there are minor deviations from the plausible, for example in aspects of the dress, and an occasional imprecision, for instance in the musical notation, Costa has attended carefully to the idiosyncracies of contemporary fashion and to the gestures [page 59] which are natural to affectionate absorption, which would be less likely had his figures been personifications and their interaction merely illustrations of an idea.

Function

The studioli of noble families in the Renaissance, such as those in the palaces of the Montefeltro at Urbino and Gubbio, or that of Isabella d’Este at Mantua, were often decorated with intarsia panels depicting musical instruments (p. 24, fig. 10).²² It has been suggested that NG 2486 may have been part of a set of paintings depicting musical instruments, or representing the sister arts, such as would have suited a room of this sort, dedicated to the pursuit of cultivated and intimate leisure.²³ Some special explanation is certainly required for a work of such originality.

Musicians with instruments feature in the frescoed ceiling of the Sala del Tesoro in the Palazzo Costabili (called Palazzo di Ludovico il Moro), painted by Garofalo in the first decade of the sixteenth century.²⁴ In 1545 Niccolò dell’Abate (1512–1571) painted for the ceiling of the Camerino dell’Eneide in the Rocca Boiardo at Scandiano (now in the Galleria Estense, Modena) 13 figures, usually identified as members of the Boiardo family, playing different instruments.²⁵ Both of these paintings reflect the common pratice, in secular as well as ecclesiastical settings, of performing music from a high gallery. It may be that Costa’s concert was also placed high up, for it is of a size that could have served as an overdoor in a small room, as indeed later works in this genre certainly did in the seventeenth century; yet the vanishing‐point is not low, as it usually (but not invariably) is in such paintings.

Attribution and dating

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, when it was in the Hercolani collection, NG 2486 was attributed to ‘Ercole Grandi’.²⁶ This was the usual way to refer to the artist who is now generally known as Ercole Roberti and NG 2486 was indeed a key work in the estimate of this artist’s achievment achievement .²⁷ Luigi Crespi, in the earliest‐known reference to the painting, commended the artist’s remarkable ability to represent feelings, as well as the precision of his drawing.²⁸ In a footnote to the Vite dei pittori ferraresi by Girolamo Baruffaldi (1675–1755), Giuseppe Boschini assigned the painting to Ercole, identifying the lute player as a self‐portrait of the artist.²⁹ This attribution was rejected by Fritz von Harck, who in 1884 was the first to ascribe the work to Costa.³⁰ It is striking, however, that Calvi in 1780 described it as in a ‘stile simile a quello del Costa’.³¹ Giovanni Morelli was undecided between Ercole Roberti and Costa, but Adolfo Venturi preferred Ercole.³² In 1894 the picture was displayed as a work by Ercole (Benson’s attribution) at the Burlington House exhibition of Ferrarese painting.³³ Although in 1907 Bernard Berenson proposed that it might be by Lorenzo Costa, most scholars during the first decades of the twentieth century accepted the attribution to Ercole.³⁴

The attribution to Costa began to prevail after 1934, when it was supported by Roberto Longhi, who assigned to the painting a date of around 1490, noting the stylistic similarities to Costa’s Bentivoglio Altarpiece (p. 51, fig. 1).³⁵ Mario Salmi suggested in 1960 that the painting was a collaborative work of Roberti and Costa (especially the two singers and the ‘badly painted hands’).³⁶ It is now generally agreed to be by Costa.

The Concert may have been painted in the years between the Bentivoglio Altarpiece (1488) and the Rossi Altarpiece (1492).

Previous owners

The painting is first recorded in the collection of Marchese Filippo Hercolani in Bologna, in an inventory compiled by Luigi Crespi in 1774.³⁷ (For a full account of this collection see pp. 466–72.) In 1780 Jacopo Alessandro Calvi described it in his account of the same collection (from which we quote in the section devoted to the subject above).³⁸ The Hercolani sold the picture for 20 scudi on 23 April 1836, as noted in an inventory drawn up in the same year.³⁹ The names of the persons who purchased paintings from them are registered in the Libro mastro of 1836. No sale is recorded under 23 [page 60]April, but the entries dated 26 and 28 April reveal that some paintings were sold to ‘Filippo Pasini Ferrarese’.⁴⁰ It is most likely that these included NG 2486 as, in 1844, Giuseppe Boschini mentions the picture as being in the hands of ‘Signor Pasini in Roma … già in Bologna nella galleria Hercolani’.⁴¹ The art dealer Filippo Pasini (1792–1854) was a friend of the painter Antonio Boldini (father of the more famous Giovanni), whose copies of Ferrarese old masters he sold in his shop in Rome.⁴²

In a letter written to Wornum on 11 May 1863, Eastlake rejected an Ercole Grandi belonging to Otto Mündler (1811–1870).⁴³ The possibility that the painting was the Concert is suggested by the fact that George Salting, in one of his notebooks, indicates that the picture had belonged to Mündler.⁴⁴ Salting purchased the ‘Concert by Ercole Grandi’ on 7 March 1877 for £600 from Raffaelle Pinti (1826–1881), a restorer and importer of Italian paintings.⁴⁵ The picture was lent by Salting to the National Gallery in 1903 and was later included in his bequest of 1910.

Provenance

See above. Hercolani collection, Bologna, by 1774. Sold in 1836 to Filippo Pasini. Probably with Otto Mündler by 1863. Acquired by Raffaelle Pinti and sold in 1877 to George Salting, by whom bequeathed to the National Gallery in 1910.

Framing

The painting was given, probably in the first half of the twentieth century, a carved and gilded Italian cassetta frame probably dating from the early seventeenth century. It was of reverse pattern, with a bold scrolling leaf on the higher inside moulding. This was replaced in April 2012 with another gilded reverse cassetta frame of the later sixteenth or early seventeenth century supplied by Rolo Whateley. The flat is decorated with a running vine defined by a punched background.

Appendix
Portraits in Costa’s Concert

Various hypotheses about the identity of the musicians depicted in NG 2486 have been proposed. In 1894 Robert H. Benson seems to have been the first to suggest that the sitters might be members of the Bentivoglio family, noting the resemblance between the female musician and one of the Bentivoglio daughters in the altarpiece Costa painted in 1488 for the family’s chapel (p. 51, fig. 1).⁴⁶ Benson’s idea has been revived recently by Katherine Wallace, on the basis of comparisons with portraits of the Bentivoglio, including the group portrait in the Thyssen‐Bornemisza collection (fig. 11).⁴⁷ This canvas by Costa is considered by many scholars to be related to NG 2486 in date and conception. [page 61]It is, however, an additive composition, without a plausible setting or relationship either in space or in pyschology such as we find in NG 2486. The picture bears inscriptions dating it to 1493 and identifiying the singers with members of the Bentivoglio family and other individuals, including the artist himself (on the lower left) and Bonaparte dalle Tovaglie, the maestro di cappella of the cathedral of S. Pietro in Bologna.⁴⁸

It has been suggested that three of the Bentivoglio siblings supposedly depicted in the Thyssen painting – the central figure, the woman in the upper left and the young man beside her (Ermete, Bianca and Anton Galeazzo, according to the inscriptions) – resemble the musicians in NG 2486.⁴⁹ However, the Thyssen canvas does not seem to be of much use for the identification of the sitters of our picture. Perhaps because of its condition, most of the members of the Bentivoglio family who are supposed to be represented here do not resemble other representations of them. For instance, the figure identified by the inscription as Anton Galeazzo is rather different from his portrait in the Adoration of the Infant Christ with Saints formerly in the church of S. Maria della Misericordia, Bologna (now in the local Pinacoteca Nazionale), painted by Francia around 1498–9.⁵⁰ The features of the shepherd on the far right of this altarpiece suggest that he might be a portrait, perhaps of Alessandro Bentivoglio (1474–1532).⁵¹ It is tempting to propose that he might be the very person depicted to the right in NG 2486. Arguments could be advanced in favour of other identifications with members of the Bentivoglio family but it is often the style of hair that is more distinctive than physiognomy in suggesting a connection. The ragged fringe of the lute‐player in NG 2486 is also found in a man, very likely a portrait, painted by Costa in 1490 in the lower right corner of the Triumph of Death in the Bentivoglio chapel (S. Giacomo Maggiore, Bologna)⁵² and, although the same person may be represented in both cases, it is also clear that this was a style of hair that was briefly fashionable in Bologna (p. 18, fig. 4 and NG 2487, p. 155).

Notes