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Adriaen van Ostade
The Hunchbacked Fiddler (3rd State)

1654

$10,500
£8,063.55
€9,240.73
CA$14,781.41
A$16,558.44
CHF 8,628.46
MX$201,978.82
NOK 109,647.91
SEK 103,390.16
DKK 68,970.26

About the Item

The Hunchbacked Fiddler (3rd State), 1654 Etching 266 x 113 mm.; 6 1/2 x 4 7/16 inches Watermark: Fleur-de-lys in a Crowned Shield References: Godefroy 44 III/VI Hollstein 44 III/VI Pelletier, Adrian van Ostade, Georgia Museum of Art, 1994: no. 107 Notes: A fine, silvery impression of the exceedingly rare 3rd state. With the smallest details clearly printed. In the following 4th state, there is a series of oblique lines going from the hat of the peasant on the right, through the ladder. Pelletier (p. 219) notes that: Although the negative themes of this sheet are hardly discernible to modern sensibilities, it is likely that Ostade’s contemporaries would have viewed it with quite different eyes. The bad reputation of traveling musicians was widespread during the seventeenth century, and they were frequently classed as little more than beggars, or worse. This aspect, when joined to the fact that Ostade depicted his fiddler as a hunchbacked dwarf is intensified by the widespread belief that physical deformity was either a cause or a result of evil. Indeed, the first Dutch translation of Cesare Ripa’s famous Italian handbook, Iconologia, published in 1644, used deformity as one of the attributes of depravity. The presence of a child with a hoop, also found in Ostade’s The Quacksalver of 1648, B. 43, may also comment negatively on the scene. For example, Jacob Cats used a child with a hoop to stand for a person whose life follows a path leading nowhere. Obviously, in seventeenth-century terms, it was an appropriate symbol for a deformed, wandering musician.
  • Creator:
    Adriaen van Ostade (1610 - 1685, Dutch)
  • Creation Year:
    1654
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 6.5 in (16.51 cm)Width: 4.44 in (11.28 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Chicago, IL
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU36532707141

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