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Musicians and Soldiers
Valentin de Boulogne French
Not on view
The seventeenth-century scholar Robert Burton wrote, "Music is a sovereign remedy against despair and Melancholy." Two of the figures have been adapted from the allegorical Musical Party (on view nearby), but the composition is more open and dispersed: the figures appear to be absorbed in their own world. Rather than an allegory of the four ages of man, the picture suggests the inadequacy of wine and music to dispel a melancholic state. With what gravity the gypsy beats her tambourine!
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