Lot Essay
Eberhart Caspersen Keilhau was born at Elsinore in Denmark, the son of a German painter of modest ability from Meissen and his Dutch wife. After six years of training in Denmark, Keilhau was able, through his mother's contacts, to gain a position in Rembrandt's studio in Amsterdam, in which he spent two years (1642-4). He subsequently worked for the prominent dealer Hendrick Uylenburgh for three years and then ran his own shop there for four years before travelling to Italy. He arrived in Venice in 1651, moved to Bergamo in 1654 for a number of months, and sojourned briefly in Milan before setting out for Rome. There, in 1657, despite the plague which had infested the city since the previous summer, Keilhau settled definitively, marrying and converting to Catholicism.
Minna Heimbürger points out, loc. cit., that in this picture Keilhau has overcome his early difficulties with co-ordinating two half-length figures and dates it to his brief period in Bergamo 1654-5, seeing the influences of the local artists Ceresa and Baschenis respectively in the handling of the sleeves and in the compositional importance of the string instruments.
Minna Heimbürger points out, loc. cit., that in this picture Keilhau has overcome his early difficulties with co-ordinating two half-length figures and dates it to his brief period in Bergamo 1654-5, seeing the influences of the local artists Ceresa and Baschenis respectively in the handling of the sleeves and in the compositional importance of the string instruments.