A boy sings from a partbook while his music master beats time with his finger and perhaps sings along. A woman leans her arm against the teacher’s shoulder, her head tilted with a faraway look as if she is listening. A youth in a red cap with a white ostrich plume accompanies the boy on a viol da gamba, while a young man behind him plays the recorder. The music master may be a portrait of Nicola Maffei from Mantua, who commissioned Titian’s Supper at Emmaus (Louvre, Paris) and may also have commissioned The Music Lesson.
Although the music book seems to be painted in a lot of detail, the black paint of the notes is smudged; the music may never have been legible and is not a copy of a real piece of music. The theme of music-making is often associated in art with lovemaking and the passing of time.
When it was listed in the collection of Vincenzo Gonzaga, 7th Duke of Mantua in 1626–7 and in the collection of the English king, Charles I, in 1630, the painting was said to be by Titian. Later its poor condition led to doubt as to whether it was really by him. The painting hadn't been cleaned or restored for over 200 years and it was covered with a layer of opaque yellowish varnish almost as thick as the paint itself.
As a result, for many years The Music Lesson was believed to have been painted in the early 1600s by an artist imitating the style of Titian. A member of the National Gallery’s conservation team noticed that the weave of the canvas on which the picture was painted is similar to canvases of the early sixteenth century, and suggested that further investigation be carried out.
Cleaning and technical examination revealed that the painting has much in common with pictures painted by Titian and his workshop in the 1530s. The materials used and the way in which the paint was applied is similar to those in paintings from the first part of Titian’s career. Quite a few significant changes were made to the composition during painting: the woman’s arm once rested on the man’s other shoulder and the head of the boy with the recorder was originally tilted the other way. These sorts of changes are typical of those seen in paintings by Titian. However, the rendering of the figures and the surface execution of fabrics and flesh are rather rote, if still reminiscent of Titian’s style. So the painting is likely to be a workshop production overseen by the master.
This type of picture – a group of figures with the suggestion of a story or portraiture – was made popular by Giorgione, with whom Titian associated closely in his youth. The National Gallery’s painting is similar in subject and setting to the scene of music instruction in Giorgione’s The Three Ages of Man and Titian’s The Interrupted Concert of about 1511–12 (both in the Palazzo Pitti, Florence). If The Music Lesson was painted in the 1530s, it would link Titian’s earlier paintings of music-making in the style of Giorgione to his more erotic paintings of nude women with musicians painted later in his career, such as Venus with an Organist and Cupid (Prado, Madrid) of about 1555.
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