Pastoral fellowship and the Performance of Virtuosity in Titian’s Concert Champêtre

Fascinating online lecture from the Courtauld Research Forum looking at Titian’s painting “Concert Champêtre” from about 1510.

Chriscinda Henry, from McGill University in Montreal and author of “Playful Pictures: Art, Leisure and Entertainment in the Venetian Renaissance Home” discussed the figure playing the lute at the centre of the picture and how his role as a member of one of the Compagnie della Calza, social groups of patrician young men, may have influenced the work.

Despite my interest in Venetian art I’d not come across these groups before and now realise how many paintings I have seen them in in their brightly coloured doublets and hose with legs of different colours. Henry talked about how music and theatre were often a part of their parties and gatherings which were also attended by the leading courtesans of the time. They often intellectualism rural life in their poetry which is reflected in the picture.

She also discussed whether this picture might have been commissioned by the lute player or by his company, the Fausti, and whether, being painted at a time what the companies were dying out due to the War of Cambrai, whether it was actually a nostalgic piece looking back to happier times.