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Lot Essay
A young blonde woman, graceful in a long black dress and intricate white lace collar, sits with her back to the viewer before a virginal decorated with a landscape on its lid. To her right is an oriental carpet and a bass viola da gamba with a carved finial of a woman's head (comparable instruments survive; see Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, acc. no. 17.1717) which has been draped with a transparent black veil. Above her hangs a panoramic landscape painted in the 'tonal' style. In her hand the woman holds a crisply-folded piece of paper, which suggests that it may be a letter rather than sheet music.
Together with the Dutch artists Willem Buytewech, Dirck Hals and Hendrick Pot, Pieter Codde played a seminal role in the history of interior high-life genre painting during the early decades of the seventeenth century. Most of Codde's paintings are merry company scenes with numerous fashionably dressed figures making music, playing games, or sharing a drink. His single-figure compositions are far less common but often reveal greater narrative subtlety (see, for example, the master's well-known Young Smoker, Musée des Beaux Arts, Lille).
In the early twentieth century, while in the collections of the Duc de Norbonne and John Wilson in Paris, this painting was wrongly attributed to the Delft School guardroom and genre painter, Antonie Palamedesz. It was sold as the work of Willem Duyster at Christie's in London in 1974, when (as in the sale of 1991) the monogram on the virginal was deciphered as a 'D'. However, Wilhelm Bode had already correctly attributed the painting to Pieter Codde in the catalogue of De Ridder Collection (1913). The 'D' deciphered by later authors is probably the remnant of the upper half of the 'P' in Pieter Codde's monogram, which ligates the 'P' and 'C' (compare the monogram on paintings in Rijksmusuem, Amsterdam nos. C1578, A2836, and A789).
Several versions of this composition are known, all of them traditionally given to Codde but appearing in photographs to be weaker in execution than the present example. These other versions may, at least in the first two cases, be copies or variants by another hand: oil on oval panel, 18 x 14 in. (48 x 36 cm), with the same composition, sale H.L. Carey, Fisher, Lucerne, 25-28 October 1944, lot 1562; oil on panel, 15 x 11 in. (39 x 28 cm), omitting the landscape painting on the back wall and substituting a fan for the piece of paper held by the woman (with Schaeffer Gallery, Berlin, about 1930; attributed to Codde by Hofstede de Groot); and a variant of the scene with the same sitter viewed from behind but turned to the left and before a table, oil on panel, 15 x 10 in. (38.5 x 27.5 cm; see Terugzien in bewondering, exh. cat., Mauritshuis, The Hague, 19 February - 9 March 1982, p. 90, no. 26, ill.). Pentimenti (in the bass viola da gamba and at the left) in the present painting confirm that it is not a copy. Yet another variant, this one freer in handling and situating the woman in a larger room with a doorway at left from which a man emerges, has been wrongly attributed to Hendrik Pot, Dirck Hals, and even Pieter de Hooch, but it is probably actually by a follower of Codde (oil on panel, 20 x 28 in. (60 x 72 cm); formerly with Goudstikker, Amsterdam).
The psychological mystery of a figure viewed from behind or in lost profile was later perfected by the great Dutch genre painter Gerard ter Borch; this work clearly anticipates those achievements. Ter Borch employed the motif in paintings with both epistolary and musical themes. Later Dutch genre painters, including Johannes Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch, Emanuel de Witte, Gabriel Metsu, and Jacob Ochtervelt also represented women from behind playing or merely sitting at a virginal, but always in the company of others who either accompany them or listen to the performance. The singularity and isolation of the young woman in Codde's painting is, however, unique.
Together with the Dutch artists Willem Buytewech, Dirck Hals and Hendrick Pot, Pieter Codde played a seminal role in the history of interior high-life genre painting during the early decades of the seventeenth century. Most of Codde's paintings are merry company scenes with numerous fashionably dressed figures making music, playing games, or sharing a drink. His single-figure compositions are far less common but often reveal greater narrative subtlety (see, for example, the master's well-known Young Smoker, Musée des Beaux Arts, Lille).
In the early twentieth century, while in the collections of the Duc de Norbonne and John Wilson in Paris, this painting was wrongly attributed to the Delft School guardroom and genre painter, Antonie Palamedesz. It was sold as the work of Willem Duyster at Christie's in London in 1974, when (as in the sale of 1991) the monogram on the virginal was deciphered as a 'D'. However, Wilhelm Bode had already correctly attributed the painting to Pieter Codde in the catalogue of De Ridder Collection (1913). The 'D' deciphered by later authors is probably the remnant of the upper half of the 'P' in Pieter Codde's monogram, which ligates the 'P' and 'C' (compare the monogram on paintings in Rijksmusuem, Amsterdam nos. C1578, A2836, and A789).
Several versions of this composition are known, all of them traditionally given to Codde but appearing in photographs to be weaker in execution than the present example. These other versions may, at least in the first two cases, be copies or variants by another hand: oil on oval panel, 18 x 14 in. (48 x 36 cm), with the same composition, sale H.L. Carey, Fisher, Lucerne, 25-28 October 1944, lot 1562; oil on panel, 15 x 11 in. (39 x 28 cm), omitting the landscape painting on the back wall and substituting a fan for the piece of paper held by the woman (with Schaeffer Gallery, Berlin, about 1930; attributed to Codde by Hofstede de Groot); and a variant of the scene with the same sitter viewed from behind but turned to the left and before a table, oil on panel, 15 x 10 in. (38.5 x 27.5 cm; see Terugzien in bewondering, exh. cat., Mauritshuis, The Hague, 19 February - 9 March 1982, p. 90, no. 26, ill.). Pentimenti (in the bass viola da gamba and at the left) in the present painting confirm that it is not a copy. Yet another variant, this one freer in handling and situating the woman in a larger room with a doorway at left from which a man emerges, has been wrongly attributed to Hendrik Pot, Dirck Hals, and even Pieter de Hooch, but it is probably actually by a follower of Codde (oil on panel, 20 x 28 in. (60 x 72 cm); formerly with Goudstikker, Amsterdam).
The psychological mystery of a figure viewed from behind or in lost profile was later perfected by the great Dutch genre painter Gerard ter Borch; this work clearly anticipates those achievements. Ter Borch employed the motif in paintings with both epistolary and musical themes. Later Dutch genre painters, including Johannes Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch, Emanuel de Witte, Gabriel Metsu, and Jacob Ochtervelt also represented women from behind playing or merely sitting at a virginal, but always in the company of others who either accompany them or listen to the performance. The singularity and isolation of the young woman in Codde's painting is, however, unique.