The Lute Player painting greets the viewer with a languid smile in two of the largest museums in the world at once – in the Russian Hermitage and in the New York Metropolitan. Visitors to the medieval Badminton House estate located in Gloucestershire (Great Britain) can also admire the painting “The Lute Player” by Caravaggio. Why did the infamous painter paint three identical paintings and where is the first version of The Lute Player located?

Story

Until recently, the painting “Young Man with a Lute” from the Hermitage was considered the only author’s version, and the rest of the canvases were called copies. Recently it turned out that in fact Caravaggio personally wrote all three versions for different customers, and each of them had an interesting fate with a truly detective story. All the paintings depict a pretty young man playing the lute. The guy has thick brown hair, a soft smile and an enigmatic look. And only a few details indicate that all these are different versions of the same story.

Caravaggio painted his first painting, The Lute Player, in 1595, commissioned by Cardinal Francesco del Monte. For a long time it was assumed that Vincenzo Giustiniani bought the carina from del Monte. Documented information was found that the heirs of del Monte sold the canvas to the famous art lover Cardinal Antonio Barberini, from whose collection she then “migrated” to the collection of Daniel Wildenstein and to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Second painting Lute player

The painting, painted for Vincenzo Giustiniani, was sold by impoverished descendants at auction in 1808. Before the start of the auction, Emperor Alexander I turned to Dominique Vivant Denon, director of the Louvre, with a personal request to buy a masterpiece for the Hermitage collection, where it is located today. In this version of the painting, a curly-haired young man thoughtfully plucks the strings of an old lute. On the table are a violin and musical notes, fruits and a vase of flowers. If you look closely at the notes, you can read the melody “You know that I love you”, written by Jacob Arkadelt. On the version drawn for del Monte, the author drew a flute and a spinet near the violin, added a cage with a goldfinch to the background, and removed the flowers.

Third painting

The world learned about the third option only 19 years ago. In January 2001, the Sotheby’s auction house put up for auction a painting that completely repeats the plot of The Lute Player, written for Cardinal del Monte. After examining the canvas, art historians concluded that it was Caravaggio who worked on it. Since the painter left characteristic marks from the handle of the brush in the picture.