Concert Champêtre
by ROMANINO, Girolamo, Pen and brown ink with brown wash, over black chalk, 291 x 409 mm
From Giorgione onwards, the subject of pastoral concert had a rich history in sixteenth-century Venetian art. This example is the most complex and ambitious of Romanino’s drawings exploring the subject. It shows a group of three elegantly attired women and a satyr deployed in a circle in an expansive landscape that recedes to a distant background dotted with tiny rustic buildings. Each figure plays a viola da gamba.