The Musician

Bartholomeus van der Helst's The Musician from 1662, at the Metropolitan Museum, belongs to the later career of the painter who rivaled Rembrandt as Amsterdam's leading portraitist in the mid-seventeenth century. Van der Helst's smooth, flattering technique and elegant compositions made him more commercially successful than Rembrandt among the Amsterdam patriciate. His genre paintings, though less numerous than his portraits, demonstrate the same polished technique and attention to fashionable costume.

Van der Helst's polished technique renders the musician's costume and instrument with characteristic smoothness and precision. The warm palette and the careful rendering of silk, lace, and musical instruments demonstrate his mastery of the elegant, highly finished style that made him popular with wealthy Amsterdam patrons.