Argentine artist Emilio Pettoruti began painting street musicians (i.e., The Blind Flutist II of 1918) while living in Italy. By the time he painted The Last Serenade in 1937 urban street musicians had become a signature theme in Pettoruti’s work. Paintings by Pablo Picasso and Gino Severini, who also depicted musicians and harlequins in a cubist style in the 1910s and 1920s, most likely inspired Petorutti’s early renditions of the subject.