Unknown until its publication by Pierre Rosenberg in 1990, the present picture is the most important La Tour discovery since the mid-1970s and has been described by Mr. Rosenberg as 'un chez d'oeuvre sans équivalent dans la peinture européenne de la première moitié du XVIIe siècle' (op. cit., 1990, p.178). La Tour painted a series of blind hurdy-gurdy players which are generally regarded as early works and dated to the 1620s. These include three full-length treatments of the subject, two (Musée Municipal, Bergues, and Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes; ibid., p.170, figs.2 and 1) showing the hurdy-gurdy player frontally, respectively standing and seated, while the third (Musée Charles-Friry, Remiremont; ibid., p.171, figs.3 and 4) represents him seated and in profile. It is this last which the present picture, the culmination of the series, most resembles in pose. When he first published it in 1990, Rosenberg suggested that the figure might originally have been full-length; more recently (loc. cit., 1991), he has advanced the hypothesis that the painting may have been the pendant of a lost three-quarter length 'Triangle Player' known through a copy owned by Emile Verrijken, Antwerp (ibid., fig.47)