Le leurre du « violone » dans The Concert de Sir Peter Lely : les sources intimes de l’harmonie

• Main Author: Claire Berget
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Société d'Etudes Anglo-Américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles 2012-12-01
• Series: XVII-XVIII
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/1718/614

Peter Lely’s The Concert (late 1640s) pictures a bucolic concert scene set in a glade, where a violist and a flautist seem to entertain four women standing and sitting in front of artistically hung draperies. Although the salient presence of the bass violin suggests this picture does represent a concert, the careful spectator cannot help but notice that its inner harmony is not channelled through the musical element, but by the complex time and space construction. Many incoherencies could be attributed to poetic licence – the mixed indoors-outdoors décor, the varied costumes and postures of the women, who aren’t even acknowledging each other – however they first and foremost point to a much favoured baroque theme: the fallacy of appearances. Music, through this shapely, feminine bass, acts as a revealing agent of the musician’s erotic emotions in all their theatricality.