El Concierto

Three musicians gather in a quiet room: a young woman at the keyboard, a man with a lute, a woman singing. It is one of Vermeer's calmest scenes, and since one night in 1990, no one knows where it is.

The story behind the painting

Johannes Vermeer's The Concert shows a man and two women making music together. Its exact date is uncertain: the painting has been dated on grounds of style to the mid-1660s, around 1664, while Wikidata gives 1663. Its early history is just as hidden, since it is first documented only in 1780. A clue to Vermeer's household hangs in the picture itself. The painting on the right wall is The Procuress by Dirck van Baburen, from around 1622, which belonged to Vermeer's mother-in-law, Maria Thins. Vermeer painted it again in Lady Seated at a Virginal, probably some six years after The Concert, as if this familiar object lived on in his studio.

What to look for

The picture is modest in size, about 72.5 by 64.7 centimetres. Find the three musicians: a young woman seated at a harpsichord, a man playing the lute, and a woman singing. The harpsichord's raised lid is decorated with an Arcadian landscape, its bright colours set against the two darker paintings on the wall behind. On the floor lies a viola da gamba. Notice the details of status: the lute player wears a shoulder belt and a sword, and the black and white marble floor, simple as it looks, was luxurious and costly. These clothes and surroundings mark the players as members of the upper bourgeoisie.

Meaning and intent

In Vermeer's time, music in Dutch painting often hinted at love and seduction. Here the mood is more ambiguous. Van Baburen's sexually exuberant Procuress on the wall seems to invite such a reading, yet it may instead serve as a contrast to the calm domestic music-making below it. The same play of opposites runs through the room: the peaceful scenes painted on the harpsichord lid answer the wild pastoral landscape hanging on the left. Vermeer sets these images side by side and leaves the viewer to weigh them, so that a simple concert becomes a quiet conversation between harmony and temptation.

Legacy

Isabella Stewart Gardner acquired The Concert at an auction in Paris in 1892, and it was displayed in her museum in Boston. On the night of 18 March 1990, thieves disguised as policemen stole thirteen works from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, The Concert among them. It has never resurfaced. The painting has lived on in other arts: even before the robbery, a 1964 episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour imagined its theft, and since then it has appeared in novels by Steve Martin, Gordon Korman, Daniel Silva and Kate Atkinson. In Tracy Chevalier's novel Girl with a Pearl Earring and its 2003 film, Vermeer paints it alongside that famous portrait.

¿Sabías que…?

Dated c. 1664 by Wikipedia; Wikidata gives 1663.
First documented in 1780; bought by Isabella Stewart Gardner in Paris in 1892.
Stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on 18 March 1990; still missing.
Size: 72.5 × 64.7 cm.

Wikipedia · Wikidata