Portrait of a Lute Player (Orazio Bassani?)

This portrait likely shows the virtuoso lute player Orazio Bassani. Rather than depicting the musician in a static pose beside his instrument, Agostino shows him in the act of tuning it. Bassani looks into the viewer’s space instead of the musical transcription before him. With great subtlety the artist paints Bassani’s fingers at diverse and contrasting angles in order to suggest movement as he plucks and adjusts the lute’s strings.

Like the Carracci, Bassani enjoyed the patronage of the Farnese dynasty. He was employed by the family in Brussells, Rome, and Parma. Agostino painted this portrait in 1585–86 while he and his brother Annibale were active in Parma, the dukedom of the Farnese. In 1593–94 Annibale painted a very similar portrait of the lutenist Giulio Mascheroni, now in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden.