Cornelis De Man (delft 1621 - 1706), Musical Company In An Interior

Cornelis de Man (Delft 1621 - 1706)
Musical company in an interior

About 1670
oil on canvas, 100 x 84.5 cm
The work is accompanied by an expertise of Dr. Fred G. Meijer (Amsterdam)

Full details: https://www.antichitacastelbarco.it/it/prodotto/cornelis-de-man--compagnia-musicale-in-un-interno

This painting is an excellent and interesting work by Cornelis de Man (1621-1706), no doubt painted in Delft around the 1670s. In Delft de Man he painted many genre scenes, and his works can be associated with those of his fellow citizens Pieter de Hooch and Johannes Vermeer.

De Man was very interested in perspective representation and this is also evident in his genre interiors, which often include architectural motifs.

Born in Delft, Cornelis de Man's artistic development includes short stays in both Paris and Lyon, before heading to southern Italy, where he settles in Florence, Rome and Venice. By the year 1653, de Man returned to Delft where he began a career as a successful painter and remained until his death in 1706, barring a brief stay in The Hague in 1700.

He became a member of the Delft Guild of Saint Luke as early as December 1642 and headed it several times between 1657 and 1680.

He is best known for his interior scenes with middle-class families, clerics and scholars. In addition to this, de Man produced a single known still life and some portraits and church interiors. The latter, as well as his genre scenes of him, mostly date back to 1660 and 1670. It seems he didn't paint much after 1680.

As his church interiors show, de Man was very interested in perspective and this is also evident in his genre interiors, which often include interesting architectural motifs.

For example, the wooden mantle of the fireplace in the present painting, with a curtain below, appears very similar in a painting with a man weighing gold and in a painting of a curiosity trader (fig. 2 and 3). In the first the same tondo of Christ adorns the roof, and the ceiling beams also play an important role in it.

Other examples show an opposite window with similar light entering (fig. 3 and 4).

There are very few dated examples of de Man's work, but the costumes of the figures often provide an indication. From the chronology that can thus be established, it seems that de Man's paintings become gradually more crowded, a little less refined in their execution and softer in their coloring. However, his attention to detail and his love for detail remained the same.

The poses and types of figures in our painting also suit Cornelis de Man well. He liked to depict the figure half turned to the viewer, and many of the men in his domestic scenes wear a house cap, like the harp player in the your painting (fig. 2, 4 and 6).

The theme of a musical company was very popular at the time and there are many examples of it, among others by Pieter de Hooch, about the same decade (fig. 7). It can be said that they represent domestic and family harmony. Instruments usually include string and wind instruments, as in our painting, but the harp is a rarity in such images.

The painting is completed by a pleasant gilded wood frame.

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fig 2 Cornelis de Man, oil on canvas, 81.6 x 67.6 cm. Art market, 1998.
fig. 3 Cornelis de Man, oil on canvas, 94.6 x 86.8 cm. Art market, 2020.
fig. 4 Cornelis de Man, oil on canvas, 74.3 x 65.7. Art market, 1989
fig. 5 Cornelis de Man, oil on canvas, 82.5 67.5 cm. Art market, 1995.
fig. 6 Cornelis de Man, oil on canvas, 81 x 68 cm. Hamburg, Kunsthalle, inv. no. 239
fig. 7 Pieter de Hooch, signed, oil on canvas, 92 x 105.5 cm. Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst, inv. no. KMSsp613