Lorenzo Costa, 'A Concert', about 1488-90

A Concert

Lorenzo Costa

Room 14

About the work

Overview

With this painting, Costa invented a type of image that would become very popular in northern Italy, particularly Venice, in the sixteenth century. The band of singers is engrossed in the camaraderie of their music; as she sings, the young woman keeps time by tapping her fingers against the marble ledge and her companion’s shoulder. He is deep in concentration, his eyes lowered towards the open book containing the musical composition. The young man behind him appears to be straining to reach or hold a note and he too is tapping time on the ledge.

The picture does not depict a particular moment or people. It is more likely that it was made to entertain an educated and wealthy patron who, like his contemporaries, embraced the fashion for cantare a libro (’singing from a book'), a developing trend in northern Italy.

In-depth

With this painting, Costa invented a type of image that would become very popular in northern Italy, particularly Venice, in the sixteenth-century – look at The Music Lesson and A Concert, for example. While pictures of people playing musical instruments and singing are now often called ‘concerts’, they may have been intended to depict private moments.

The band of singers is engrossed in the camaraderie of their music; as she sings, the young woman keeps time by tapping her fingers against the marble ledge and her companion’s shoulder. He is deep in concentration, his eyes lowered towards the open book containing the musical composition – its notes have only been roughly sketched in. His lute, by contrast, has an elaborately carved rosette which has been painted with great attention to detail. The young man behind him appears to be straining to reach or hold a note and he too is tapping time on the ledge. The trio’s concentration and exertion are tangible, and the intensity of the moment is enhanced by the deep black background. The song is perhaps a complex one. It might be a frottola – a three-part song written for tenor, soprano and bass accompanied by a lute. The woman’s dress, with its cloth of gold sleeves and jewelled gold collar, provides some luxurious embellishment to an otherwise stark image.

The small violin-like instrument is a rebec; a recorder leans across it. The end of the rebec projects over the edge of the ledge, adding an extra dimension of space to the image – the space between us and the ledge. The inclusion of these instruments not only suggests the musical skill and versatility of the musicians but also the depth of the ledge.

It has been suggested that the singers might be members of the Bentivoglio family, who commissioned an altarpiece – featuring their portraits – from Costa for the church of San Giacomo Maggiore, Bologna, at around this time. A painting in the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid shows a group of figures huddled around a sheet of music, and includes inscriptions identifying them as members of the Bentivoglio family; the comparison with the faces of our musicians is not entirely convincing. As the score and musical instruments aren‘t painted with complete accuracy, some have suggested that the picture could have been intended as an allegorical representation of Harmony or the art of music. But it seems most likely that the picture was made to entertain an educated and wealthy patron who, like his contemporaries, embraced the fashion for cantare a libro (’singing from a book’), a developing trend in northern Italy. We know from surviving fifteenth-century letters that members of the Este family, the rulers of Ferrara, for example, enjoyed performing together for their own or others' entertainment.

Want to find out more?

Delve deeper and explore the catalogue entry for this painting.

Key facts

Details

Full title: A Concert
Artist: Lorenzo Costa
Artist dates: 1460 - 1535
Date made: about 1488-90
Medium and support: oil on wood
Dimensions: 95.3 × 75.6 cm
Acquisition credit: Salting Bequest, 1910
Inventory number: NG2486
Location: Room 14
Collection: Main Collection
Previous owners: George Salting
Frame: 16th-century Italian Frame

Provenance

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.

Additional information

Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Giorgia Mancini and Nicholas Penny, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings’, vol. 3, ‘Bologna and Ferrara’, London 2016; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.

Bibliography

1780

J.A. Calvi, Versi e prose sopra una serie di eccellenti pitture posseduta dal signor marchese Filippo Hercolani, Bologna 1780
1782

C.C. Malvasia, Pitture, scolture ed architetture delle chiese, luoghi pubblici, palazzi, e case della città di Bologna, Bologna 1782
1844

G. Baruffaldi, Vite de' pittori e scultori Ferraresi, ed. G. Boschini, Ferrara 1844
1884

F. Harck, 'Die Fresken im Palazzo Schifanoja in Ferrara', Jahrbuch der Königlich Preussischen Kunstsammlungen, V, 1884, pp. 99-127
1889

A. Venturi, 'Ercole de' Roberti', Archivio storico dell'arte, 1889
1892

G. Morelli, Italian Painters: Critical Studies of Their Works, 2 vols, London 1892
1894

F. Harck, 'Ausstellungen und Versteigerungen: Burlington Fine Arts Club, London', Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, XVII, 1894, pp. 312-9
1894

J.P. Richter, 'Old Ferrarese and Bolognese Pictures', Art Journal, X, 1894, p. 255
1907

B. Berenson, North Italian Painters of the Renaissance, New York 1907
1908

A. Venturi, 'Le opere de' pittore ferraresi del '400 secondo il catalogo di Bernardo Berenson', L'arte, 1908, pp. 419-32
1910

C. Phillips, 'The Salting Collection, II: The Italian Pictures', The Burlington Magazine, XVII/85, 1910, pp. 9-22
1911

E.G. Gardner, The Painters of the School of Ferrara, London 1911
1915

H.F. Cook, 'Further Light on Baldassare d'Este', The Burlington Magazine, XXVII/147, 1915, pp. 98-104
1933

C. Gamba, 'Ercole de Ferrara', in L'esposizione della pittura ferrarese del Rinascimento, Ferrara 1933
1941

S. Ortolani, Cosmè Tura, Francesco del Cossa, Ercole de' Roberti, Milan 1941
1950

B. Nicolson, The Painters of Ferrara: Cosmè Tura, Francesco Del Cossa, Ercole de' Roberti and Others, London 1950
1960

M. Salmi, Ercole de' Roberti, Milan 1960
1961

P. Egan, '"Concert" Scenes in Musical Paintings of the Italian Renaissance', Journal of the American Musicological Society, XIV/2, 1961, pp. 184-95
1962

Gould, Cecil, National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Italian Schools (excluding the Venetian), London 1962
1967

R. Varese, Lorenzo Costa, Milan 1967
1968

R. Longhi, Ampliamento nell'Officina ferrarese, Rome 1968
1975

C. Gould, Delaroche and Gautier: Gautier's Views on the 'Execution of Lady Jane Grey' and on other Compositions by Delaroche, London 1975
1977

C.M. Brown, Lorenzo Costa, Ann Arbor 1977
1977

P. Tosetti, 'Lorenzo Costa', University of Padua: Annals of the Faculty of Arts and Philiosophy, II, 1977
1978

V.I. Stoichita, 'Deux œuvres ferraraises au Musée d'Art de la République Socialiste de Roumanie I: Qualche fabule antiqua et de bello significato', Revue roumaine d'histoire de l'art, XV, 1978, pp. 19-52
1981

National Gallery, 'Pictures Cleaned and Restored in the Conservation Department of the National Gallery, January 1981 - December 1981', National Gallery Technical Bulletin, VI, 1982
1987

Gould, Cecil, National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Italian Schools, London 1987
1990

K. Christiansen, A Caravaggio Rediscovered: The Lute Player (exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 9 February 1990 - 22 April 1990), New York 1990
1991

J. Dunkerton et al., Giotto to Dürer: Early Renaissance Painting in the National Gallery, New Haven 1991
1992

J. Manca, The Art of Ercole de'roberti, Cambridge 1992
1993

C. Volpe, La pittura nell'Emilia e nella Romagna, Modena 1993
1995

A. Ballarin, Dosso Dossi: La pittura a Ferrara negli anni del Ducato di Alfonso I, Padua 1995
2001

C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
2016

Mancini, Giorgia, and Nicholas Penny, National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings, 3, Bologna and Ferrara, London 2016

Frame

This is a sixteenth-century Italian frame from the Emilia region. Crafted from poplar wood, it features a reverse profile and retains its original gilded surface. The back edge is decorated with imbricated laurel leaves. The wide frieze is adorned with a punch-tooled design of undulating vine leaves flowing towards the corner leaves, set against a punched background. The carved sight moulding displays a twisted-ribbon motif.

This frame was acquired and fitted to Costa’s A Concert in 2012.

About this record

If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.

Images

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Saint John the Evangelist is seated on a stone ledge. He holds a very fine quill in his right hand, while the other rests on a blank scroll which curls over his knee. He turns to look up over his shoulder towards a heavenly light, as if ready to take dictation from on high. Saint John was one of...

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Saint Peter

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Saint Philip

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A bearded Saint Philip stands in a landscape, immersed in a book. A slender cross rests against his shoulder, with another cross attached to it where Christ’s crucified body would have been hung, a reference to Philip’s martyrdom (he was crucified upside down).This painting was originally part of...

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The Adoration of the Shepherds with Angels

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This extraordinary painting is a unique depiction of the Adoration of the Shepherds. The Virgin Mary, Joseph and two shepherds cluster round the infant Christ; the ox and the donkey peer out of the darkness behind them. They are not, however, in a stable in Bethlehem, but gathered in front of a v...

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The High Altarpiece from San Pietro in Vincoli, Faenza

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These five paintings were once part of a large multi-panel altarpiece, or polyptych, made for the high altar of the Oratory of S. Pietro in Vincoli, Faenza. It was originally topped by a horizontal panel, now lost, showing the dead Christ supported by angels.Although the altarpiece has been disme...

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This painting of the Virgin and Child enthroned was once the central element of a large multi-panelled altarpiece made for the oratory of S. Pietro in Vincoli, Faenza. In it, heaven and earth mingle. The Virgin is depicted as Queen of Heaven, although she has no crown: behind her is a green silk...

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The Virgin and Child with Saints

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You've viewed 6 of 9 works