Unknown to scholars until its appearance on the market in 2005, this work has been identified by Annick Lemoine as one of Régnier's masterpieces, executed in Rome in the early 1620s. With its fluid handling, creamy textures, and elegant balance of figural and still-life elements, this exceptional painting displays all the hallmarks of Régnier's style at the height of his career in the Eternal City, both for the quality of its execution and state of preservation.1 Following the 2005 sale, the work was restored to its former glory and its signature was revealed.
Of Flemish origin, Régnier is documented in Rome from about 1617 where, according to Joachim von Sandrart, he frequented the workshop of Bertolomeo Manfredi, an Italian follower of Caravaggio. Alongside his contemporaries Valentin de Boulogne, Claude Vignon, and Simon Vouet, Régnier also became one of the founding members of the "Bentvueghels," the society of Dutch and Flemish artists then active in the city.2
Deeply indebted to Caravaggio, who died in 1610, this loosely painted and confidently executed work depicts a young woman singing, her mouth half-open and her finger pointing delicately to the musical score laid out in front of her. She is accompanied by a lute-player, his concentrated gaze intently directed toward her as he attempts to keep t.mes with her. He is seen plucking the strings of an eleven-course baroque lute, an instrument that was entirely contemporary with the early seventeenth century. Régnier’s accuracy in depicting both the instrument and the musical scores is impressive.
The still life elements in this composition are particularly refined; the coupling of the lute with a violin and musical scores, waiting patiently on the table below, are reminiscent Caravaggio's Lute Player in the The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg (fig. 1).3 The almost identical violin, with a similar marquetry in-lay on the fingerboard as seen in the Hermitage painting, suggests that Régnier had the opportunity to study Caravaggio’s painting directly. Although the score in this work appears never to have been intended to be read, unlike Caravaggio’s song books, the positioning of this musical still life serves a double purpose of enhancing the illusion of depth in this composition.
Other than the undisputable influence of Caravaggio, this work shares similarities with the works of Simon Vouet, alongside whom Régnier worked in Rome from 1622 to 1625, the year in which Régnier left Rome for Venice. It is of no surprise that in the past this painting was tentatively attributed to Vouet by some scholars who considered it to have been executed during his Roman sojourn (that is circa 1616-1618 or perhaps later, in the mid- to late-1620s). Particularly comparable in execution to the present work is the white sleeve of the gypsy in Vouet's Fortune–Teller in the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.4
A secondary version of this painting, of comparable dimensions and with minor differences to the composition, is currently untraced and is known to scholars from black and white photographs held at the Fondazione Longhi and Kunsthistorisches Institut archives in Florence, where it is recorded as with Dr. Curt Benedict in Berlin in 1927. Slightly more schematic in treatment and less fluidly painted, it differs from the present work as the female figure is depicted adorned with a pearl on her forehead.5
1 Since its appearance on the market almost twenty years ago the work has been conserved, revealing the artist's signature at lower center on the musical score.
2 Lemoine 2007, pp. 30, 32.
3 inv. no. ГЭ-45.
4 inv. no. 6737.
5 Lemoine 2007, p. 241, cat. no. 40, reproduced.