Concert at a Table

This painting by Ambrosius Benson – a painter of Lombard origins enrolled in the Guild of Bruges in 1519 but not documented by literary sources – is placed in a theme of feasts between ladies and knights. It is a figurative production with a courteous atmosphere in which the painter exhibits the elegance of the costumes and the environment through a fine and delicate drafting of very transparent glazes. The iconographic interpretation is one of the most problematic and interesting aspects of the work, since the theme of the concert, which is expressed in the combination of love and music, was taken up by Nordic painters also for the iconography of the parable of the Prodigal Son. The outdoor banquet of the painting can therefore be interpreted as the episode of the dissipation of goods by the young man, with an allusion to the greeting to the father in the gesture of the man who takes his cap off.