The Five Senses, Hearing

The series of paintings illustrating the Five Senses reveals a clearly Baroque sensibility, evident in the artist’s capacity to capture the psychology of his sitters, the portrait’s realism resulting from the artist’s skill in capturing the spontaneity of a fleeting moment. Gonzales Coques painted two other series of paintings devoted to the five senses, of which one is currently in the National Gallery, London. In the series in the Brukenthal Art Gallery, the painter emphasizes the psychological states of his sitters, apparently common people, from the lower middle class. In this series, the attributes of the senses only serve as pretexts, to include in the composition a number of static elements (tables laden with food, musical notes, smoking paraphernalia, medical instruments, and an easel). The last work in the series, entitled Hearing, depicts a character that seems to be carried beyond the confines of this world, by experiencing the ennobling effect of music, whose attribute is the violin. The young violinist plays his instrument for his own pleasure, and at the same time, he is also the listener, becoming a metaphorical image of art that feeds on its own inexhaustible richness. ©Dana Roxana Hrib, European Art Gallery Guidebook, Second edition, Sibiu 2011.