Interior with Musicians Seated around a Table

1627 · Private collection

genre

The figures in this harmonic scene are painted with a naturalism that is typical of Codde, and the utmost care is taken in painting the sitters' clothing. Though his palette is characteristically muted, restricted mostly to tones of green and brown, the artist instead concentrates on the representation of texture and light.

Interior with Musicians Seated around a Table

About the Artist

Pieter Codde

1599 – 1678

Dutch genre and portrait painter of the fashionable world and barrack-room life, active in Amsterdam. His best works are usually on a small scale, marked by subtle silvery-gray tonalities, but he achieved one memorable feat on a much larger scale. In 1637 he was called upon to finish the group portrait of the Amsterdam Civic Guards known as the Meagre Company (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) that Frans Hals began in 1633 and refused to finish because he would not come to Amsterdam for sittings, and Codde succeeded so well in capturing Hals's spirit and the touch of his brush that experts still disagree where the work of the one ends and the other begins. Codde also wrote poetry.

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