Portrait of a Musician
Artist: Bernardino Campi (Italian, 1520 - 1591)
Original Dimensions: 26 3/8" x 21 7/8"
Location: National Gallery of Art, London
About Artwork: (1560s) "This unidentified man is standing beside a virginal, which was a very popular household keyboard instrument in sixteenth-century Italy. He is shown half-length holding a pair of steel dividers – used to take measurements – which echo the splayed pose of his fingers against his black costume. The picture is possibly by Bernardino Campi, who was one of the leading painters in Cremona and portrayed the city’s prominent citizens. It may be that the dividers refer to the musical scale and that the man was a designer of musical instruments, as Cremona was famous for the making of musical instruments. The portrait resembles a dated and inscribed portrait by Campi of Don Prospero Quintavalle (private collection, Italy) of 1556. The costume and style of beard suggest a date in the early 1560s." - (National Gallery of Art, London)

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