The Beautiful Bandurria Player

The bandurria is a plucked string instrument of the cittern family, widely played in Spain and particularly associated with traditional Andalusian and Valencian musical culture. Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta painted a bandurria player — a young woman in an idealized Spanish setting — around 1880, combining the appeal of a musical subject with the exotic Spanish coloring that sold well to international collectors. Musical subjects had deep roots in the history of European painting, from Caravaggio's lute players to Vermeer's domestic musicians, and Raimundo's version participated in this tradition while addressing the specific nineteenth-century market for Spanish costume pieces. The combination of an attractive female figure, traditional instrument, and evocative Spanish setting was a formula that Raimundo and other Spanish painters of his generation perfected for the international market.

The bandurria's complex wooden form — curved soundboard, decorative rosette, multiple paired strings — is rendered with careful attention to its craft. The instrument's glossy varnished surface reflects surrounding light in curved highlights that Raimundo uses to demonstrate his command of curved reflective surfaces. The figure's hands in playing position are a secondary focal point alongside the face.