The Three Musicians

Before being appointed court painter in 1623, Diego Velázquez created numerous "bodegones" – genre paintings featuring still-life elements – in Seville. Francisco Pacheco extolled the exceptional talents of his student and son-in-law in this supposedly inferior genre and placed his pictures in the tradition of the painting of classical antiquity. The existence of no fewer than five versions of "The Three Musicians" shows just how popular the "bodegones" were even at that time. Although the Berlin painting is regarded as the best of the five, the lack of uniformity in the direction of the light and the discrepancies in the spatial construction have raised doubts about Velázquez’s authorship. For other art historians, however, these very factors indicate that the work is Velázquez’s oldest surviving painting.
Three young musicians are crowded into a small, dark room around a sparsely laid table. Their distinctive faces, modelled in strong light and shadow, contrast starkly with the dark grey surfaces of the wall behind them. Grinning mischievously and balancing a glass filled to the brim in his left hand, the boy standing at the table challenges the viewer to listen to the animated playing of his companions. The musician at the back of the panel strums his guitar and sings with his mouth thrown open and his eyes rolling ecstatically, while a violinist of a similar age accompanies him. On the green tablecloth a number of objects are arranged like a still life. A fresh bread roll sits atop a neatly folded, white linen napkin that reveals the edge of the shiny silver plate beneath it. A knife protrudes from under the bread roll, ready to be grasped. Another knife is sticking into the middle of a flat, round box placed next to a half-filled, funnel-shaped glass. The scene is completed by a monkey which squats behind the boy on the left with a pear in its hand. In imitation of the boy, it gazes straight ahead out of the painting.
At first glance, the scene seems to depict an everyday event. Three musicians have gathered in a "bodega", a simple tavern, to entertain the guests. On closer inspection, however, the image resists unequivocal interpretation. The framed painting on the wall, in which one can make out fragments of a landscape, could equally suggest an affluent setting. As a painting within a painting, it addresses the artist’s own undertaking and refers – like the confrontational gazes of the monkey and the boy – to the act of seeing in general. The musicians evoke the sense of hearing, the exact mimetic depiction of the objects on the table references the sense of touch, and the bread and drinks address taste and smell. The painting can thus be interpreted as an allegory of the senses. At the same time, however, a moralistic interpretation cannot be ruled out. The monkey eating a piece of fruit is a common symbol of humankind’s baser, animal instincts; the young men’s ardent music making can be attributed to immoderate alcohol consumption.
But is the painting really a display of morally reprehensible behaviour intended to exhort viewers to conduct themselves more commendably? Do such pictures, as Pacheco suggests, not serve primarily as entertainment? What we know for certain is that the novel subject matter, which was not bound by convention, provided a painter like Velázquez with an opportunity to demonstrate his skills and creativity.| Sven Jakstat