Reassessing the Musical Assembly with Reincken and Buxtehude painted by Johannes Voorhout in 1674
Résumé
This famous group portrait of a domestic music party by Johannes Voorhout has attracted a wealth of musicological studies - and far less interest from art historians - since it entered the collections of the Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte. In the thirty or more studies or commentaries devoted to this painting, the debate has focused on the identification of the two principal musicians and the canon represented.
We will attempt here to take stock of what is known about these questions and we will seek to better understand other details: the identification and symbolism of the six other figures that have been rarely considered or even ignored; the very specific models of instruments represented; the allegorical significance of this assembly in Reincken's career; and finally the originality of this group portrait, which seems almost unique in the production of collective portraits of musicians (artists generally represent them in their official activities) and which should be considered in the broader typology of portraits of artist-friends.
Why did Reincken, who may have suggested all these programmatic intentions to the painter Voorhout, his friend (as we shall show) and portraitist, wish to leave such a message to his entourage and thus to posterity?