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©
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Mattia Preti

The Concert

1630 - 35
Oil on canvas.
107 x 145 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Inv. no.
327
(
1977.25
)
Not on display
  • Level 2 Permanent Collection
  • Level 1 Permanent Collection
  • Level 0 Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
  • Level -1 Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms 54 Postpop rooms 55 Postpop rooms 56 Postpop rooms Rodin Exhibition room
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others • HALL
Level -1
Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Temporary exhibition rooms Conference room EducaThyssen Workshop

Born in Taverna, Calabria, Mattia Preti was one of the most important names in Neapolitan Baroque art of the second half of the 17th century. Known by his nickname “Il Cavalier Calabrese”, he was included by the writer Bernardo de Dominici in his Vite dei pittori, scultori ed architetti napoletani , one of the most important sources of information on the artist’s life. Preti moved to Rome with his brother Gregorio around 1628 and is mentioned for the first time in the Accademia di San Luca in 1632. One year later he registered with the Accademia as a painter along with his brother. In 1636 both were living in the San Biagio a Montecitorio quarter of the city. The present Concert dates from the artist’s early period, coinciding with his time in Rome in the 1630s. The painting reveals the indirect influence of Caravaggio although it was painted at a time when the importance of that artist was diminishing in Rome. Using a horizontal format, Preti locates three seated figures around a table against a plain, dark background. The canvas is one of a group of similar works in which the figures wear fine clothes that are strongly modelled by the light and amuse themselves playing cards or dice or singing and playing instruments, as in the present work. The subject matter and Preti’s approach to it have been related to the work of the large community of Dutch, French and Flemish artists living in Rome in the 17th century. In addition we should bear in mind the compositions of Bartolomeo Manfredi, an important follower of Caravaggio, who specialised in scenes of cards and soldiers and who was responsible for popularising such subjects to a greater degree than Caravaggio himself.

The Concert is one of a group of similar works including The Card Game in a private collection, Naples; The Game of Draughts, in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; and Concert with three Figures in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg. In all of them Preti deploys a horizontal format with three figures around a table, two men on each side and a woman in the middle. The figures wear striking clothes including hats or helmets adorned with large feathers. An exception among these works is the vertical one in the Palazzo Comunale in Alba in which the artist depicted a girl and two boys holding musical scores and singing around a musical instrument. That work also dates from Preti’s early period.

The present Concert is illuminated with a type of chiaroscuro that leaves large areas of the canvas in darkness, including expressive zones such as the faces and hands. Despite this shadowy setting we can discern how the figure playing the violin-like instrument looks out at the viewer. Published for the first time by Nicolson in 1979, the painting was initially catalogued as a work executed with studio assistance. In 1983, Young rejected this opinion and considered the canvas to be completely autograph. Spike, however, saw the hand of Preti and his brother who at this period shared a studio in Rome. He detected a difference in the type of brushstroke between the figure playing the violin and the other two figures, attributing the former to Gregorio Preti due to its more compact style, and the other two to Mattia. Contini did not share this opinion and considered the figure of the violinist to be the model for the similar figures to be seen in the Ashmolean and Hermitage paintings. However, despite these differences of opinion, the opinion that The Concert is an autograph work was reinforced when the painting was included in the exhibition on Preti held at the Museo Capodimonte in Naples in 1999, which allowed for comparisons with other comparable works of the same date and style.

The Concert entered the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection in 1977 and was one of the paintings displayed in Daylesford House, the residence of Baron and Baroness Thyssen-Bornemisza in the UK. A copy of the painting was on the London art market in 1960.

Mar Borobia

17th Century17th Century - Italian paintingPaintingOilcanvas
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The Concert. Un concierto, c. 1630-1635
The Concert
Mattia Preti

©

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The Concert. Un concierto, c. 1630-1635
The Concert
Mattia Preti

©

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