The Dancing Lesson

Pieter Codde and Willem Duyster were the two most prominent genre painters in Amsterdam during the 1620s and 1630s. Both became specialists in this field after some initial forays into portraiture. Their genre paintings, which reveal an intimate knowledge of contemporary artistic developments in Haarlem, comprise an important transitional stage, both thematically and stylistically, between Buytewech’s spirited interiors and the graceful images produced by the next generation of genre painters, epitomized by the work of Gerard Terborch and Johannes Vermeer.

This painting is an example of the genre scenes painted with a monochrome (grey) palette fashionable in this period.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 4 minutes):

Gioacchino Rossini: La Danza