Giuseppe Maria Crespi | Musicians | NG6626

Key facts

Full title	Musicians
Artist	Giuseppe Maria Crespi
Artist dates	1665 - 1747
Series	Two Peasant Scenes
Date made	about 1710-15
Medium and support	oil on canvas
Dimensions	100.8 × 50.1 cm
Acquisition credit	Presented by the Trustees of Sir Denis Mahon's Charitable Trust through the Art Fund, 2013
Inventory number	NG6626
Location	Not on display
Collection	Main Collection

Musicians

Giuseppe Maria Crespi

In this slender painting, three musicians play their instruments – a large triangle with rings, a recorder and a lyre. None of them look out at the viewer, and two actually turn away, a pose for which Crespi was well known. A turbaned man pulling his horse by the bridle looms over the trio. To the left, in almost complete darkness, are three soldiers, with several more on horseback behind them.

Crespi’s use of dazzling light and deep shadow leads us through this nocturnal scene, from the lower musician’s crossed legs to the captivated child on the left, up to the upper bodies of the main figures and the forearm thrust out above them. He applied thick paint in the lightest areas, creating luminous effects in the white sleeves and exposed skin of the musicians, with thinner layers in shadowed areas. The palette is predominantly made up of earthy tones – warm reds and browns – with touches of off-white.

In this slender painting, three musicians play their instruments – a large triangle with rings, a recorder and a lyre. Two wear fur hats, perhaps identifying them as shepherds. None of them look out at the viewer, and two actually turn away, a pose for which Crespi was well known and which you can also see in Peasants with Donkeys, the companion piece to this work. The triangle player peers towards the left, as though looking at something outside the picture.

Behind the musicians, a turbaned man pulls his horse by the bridle. This detail is positioned in rather a strange way, probably because the top of the picture has been cut down: the animal seems to loom over the musicians and only its nose is visible. To the left, in almost complete darkness, are three soldiers deep in conversation. Several more on horseback enter the scene behind them.

Crespi was celebrated for his use of stark lighting, often set against a dark backdrop. Here, his nocturnal scene emphasises the triangular arrangement of the musicians and their movement, particularly the two nearest the foreground who play their instruments with enthusiasm. The contrast between dazzling light and deep shadow leads us through the composition, from the crossed legs of the lower musician to the face of the captivated child on the left, up to the back, torso, arms and moving fingers of the main figures, and then to the forearm of the man holding the bridle. To achieve these contrasts, Crespi built up the impasto in the lightest areas, creating luminous effects in the white sleeves and exposed skin of the musicians, but applied the paint thinly in shadowed areas, sometimes revealing the reddish ground. Many of his pictures have a monochrome palette of rich, earthy tones, predominantly warm reds and browns, with touches of off-white.

Although Crespi was trained with artists who worked in the academic tradition of painting, he chose to make himself the direct heir of the Carracci, a family of artists who had founded an Academy in Bologna, as a painter of everyday life. He was one of very few Italian artists of his day to paint kitchen scenes, domestic subjects and ordinary gatherings like the one depicted here.

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Two Peasant Scenes

Peasants with Donkeys and its companion painting Musicians are intimate scenes of peasant life, observed by night as if we ourselves are part of the action. Both make use of a warm, earthy palette and lively, loose brushwork to bring the figures they depict to life. The two pictures probably date from between 1710 and 1715, shortly after Crespi’s stay in Florence.

These pictures were formerly thought to be fragments of a single composition, perhaps an Old Testament subject. Close examination of the canvases, however, has shown that they were part of two separate, though related, works. Both have at some point been cut down at the left and top edges, and it is impossible to know how large they originally were. They are slightly different sizes but the similarities in the scale of the figures, the range of colour and the lively brushstrokes suggest that they must have been intended to hang together.

Peasants with Donkeys and its companion painting Musicians are intimate scenes of peasant life, observed by night as if we ourselves are part of the action. They probably date from between 1710 and 1715, shortly after Crespi’s stay in Florence.

These two pictures were formerly thought to be fragments of a single composition, perhaps an Old Testament subject. Close examination of the canvases, however, has shown that they were part of two separate, though related, works. Both have at some point been cut down at the left and top edges, and it is impossible to know how large they originally were. They are slightly different sizes but the similarities in the scale of the figures, the range of colour and the lively brushstrokes suggest that they must have been intended as pendants.

Although Crespi spent most of his career in Bologna, he played a significant role in shaping a taste for painting scenes of everyday life among his Italian contemporaries. Unlike the Netherlands, which had a thriving market for genre scenes, such paintings were relatively few and far between in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italy. Crespi’s pupils Giambattista Piazzetta and Pietro Longhi played a significant role in developing the taste for this kind of genre scene, as did patrons like the Grand Prince Ferdinand de' Medici and Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, for whom Crespi worked while in Florence.

Several figures in these two works were copied by the minor Bolognese painter Giuseppe Gambarini, who is not known as a pupil of Crespi but must have visited his studio in the 1710s. Gambarini’s Dance in the Country includes two musicians that are closely related to Crespi’s; its pendant, Friars Receiving Alms (both Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart) reverses the motif of the donkey and tradesman in Peasants with Donkeys, transforming the figure into a friar. Gambarini must have copied these aspects after Crespi’s pictures had been cropped: in the work of both artists only the forequarters of the donkey are visible.

Crespi’s two paintings were part of a group of 25 Italian Baroque pictures that entered the National Gallery’s collection in 2013. They previously belonged to Sir Denis Mahon, a distinguished collector, art historian and former trustee of the Gallery.

Giuseppe Maria Crespi, 'Musicians', about 1710-15

Two Peasant Scenes

More paintings by Giuseppe Maria Crespi