# The Musicians > Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - 1597 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/caravaggio/caravaggio-the-musicians/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-07 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - **Date:** 1597 - **Medium:** Oil on canvas - **Dimensions:** 92.1 x 118.4 cm (36 1/4 x 46 5/8 in.), in the present cut-down state - **Object type:** Painting - **Period:** Italian, late sixteenth century - **Current location:** The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary Caravaggio's first picture for his first great patron, painted in 1597 for Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, and the earliest work in which he built a composition out of separately posed models rather than a scene. It is an allegory of Music and Love, not a concert: the cornetto player is a self-portrait, the lutenist may be a singer in the cardinal's employ, and the winged boy gathering grapes is the only conventional thing in it.Its provenance runs from Del Monte through Cardinal Antonio Barberini, the French ambassador Charles de Crequy, Cardinal Richelieu and the duchesse d'Aiguillon, and then stops dead for two hundred and forty-five years. It reappears in a house in Whitehaven in Cumberland in the 1920s, inventoried in 1933 as a musical party signed Helang da Caravagio, is sold for a hundred pounds in 1947, and is recognised in 1952 by the dealer David Carritt and published within weeks by Denis Mahon. The Met bought it that year. It is the worst-preserved great Caravaggio in any museum, and the damage is itself the reason the x-ray is so informative. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1597-1626** Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, Palazzo Madama, Rome `[documented]` (commission) Painted for Del Monte, probably the first work Caravaggio made expressly for him, and recorded in the inventory taken after his death in 1626. The cardinal already owned the Fortune Teller now in the Pinacoteca Capitolina and the Cardsharps now at the Kimbell, both bought on the open market through the dealer Costantino Speti. This one he ordered. - **1626-1628** Uguccione del Monte and then Alessandro del Monte, Rome `[documented]` (inheritance) To the cardinal's nephew Uguccione, who died the same year, and then to his brother Alessandro, who sold the collection. - **1628-1634** Monsignor Prospero Fagnani, probably acting for Cardinal Antonio Barberini, Rome `[disputed]` (purchase at auction) Sold at the Giardino di Ripetta in Rome on 8 May 1628 as a picture of youths singing, in a single lot with a Caravaggio of a carafe of flowers, now lost, and a music piece by Bernardino Licinio. Payment was made five days later by Fagnani, almost certainly for Cardinal Antonio Barberini. The Met carries the Barberini ownership with a question mark. An avviso of 8 July 1634 says Cardinal Antonio had bought a Caravaggio from the Vigna Ludovisi and given it to the French ambassador; the Vigna Ludovisi was Del Monte's casino near the Porta Pinciana, sold to Cardinal Ludovisi in 1621, which is how a picture from Palazzo Madama comes to be described as coming from there. - **1634-1638** Charles I de Blanchefort, Marechal de Crequy, French ambassador in Rome, then Paris `[documented]` (gift) Given to Crequy by Cardinal Antonio Barberini, together with a Lanfranco, and recorded as no. 119 in the posthumous inventory of his collection in 1638. Crequy was a serious Caravaggio buyer: he tried and failed to prise the Amor vincit omnia, now in Berlin, out of Vincenzo Giustiniani. The yellow inscription formerly in the lower left corner of this canvas matches one on another Crequy picture, the Veronese Supper at Emmaus now in the Louvre, which suggests it was applied in his collection. - **1638-1650** Cardinal Richelieu, Palais du Cardinal, Paris, and his estate `[documented]` (ownership) Recorded as no. 996 in the inventory of 1643, the year after Richelieu's death, and sold as the same number in the estate sale that ran from 7 January to 8 February 1650, for 1,030 livres tournois. - **1650-1675** Marie Wignerod de Pontcourlay, duchesse d'Aiguillon, le petit Luxembourg, Paris `[documented]` (purchase at auction) Richelieu's niece bought it out of his estate sale. Her inventory of 1675 lists it as no. 48 and notes that the canvas had been glued to a wooden support, which the Met's curators believe may have contributed to the picture's present condition. - **1675-1920s** Unrecorded `[unknown]` (gap) Two hundred and forty-five years with no owner recorded. The picture leaves a Paris palace in the reign of Louis XIV and reappears in a house in Cumberland. How it crossed the Channel, when, and in whose hands is not established in any source consulted. - **by the 1920s-1941** David Burns, Fernacre, Whitehaven, Cumberland `[documented]` (purchase) Acquired during the 1920s, according to his son D. Graham Burns, who wrote about the family's ownership in the Whitehaven News and the Burlington Magazine in 1952. The Burns inventory of pottery, porcelain and pictures at Fernacre, taken in August 1933, lists it as no. 846: a musical party signed Helang da Caravagio, 36 x 46. The dimensions in that line are the picture's, to within an inch. - **1941-1947** Mrs David Burns, Fernacre, Whitehaven `[documented]` (inheritance) Sold shortly before her death in 1947 to the Kendal dealer Joe Cookson. - **1947** Joe Cookson, Kendal, Westmoreland `[documented]` (trade stock) Sold on to Thwaytes for 100 pounds. The Times reported the figure on 29 January 1952, five years after the fact and days after the attribution became public. - **1947-1952** Surgeon Captain W. G. Thwaytes, Maulds Meaburn, Penrith `[documented]` (purchase) The owner at the moment of recognition. David Carritt identified the picture in his house; Denis Mahon published it in January 1952; Thwaytes sold it to the Metropolitan Museum in the same year. - **1952-present** The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York `[documented]` (acquisition) Rogers Fund, accession 52.81. Hung within months; the New York Times noted the new picture on 29 May 1952. The price the Met paid is not published in the sources consulted; the Whitehaven News headline of 31 January 1952 called it That 50,000 Pound Picture, which is a report of local talk about value and not a record of a transaction. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **1628-05-08** Sale at the Giardino di Ripetta, Rome, Dispersal of the Del Monte collection, lot Sold in a single lot with two other pictures - Estimate: None recorded - Hammer: Not published in the sources consulted - With premium: No buyer's premium existed in seventeenth-century Rome - The Musicians was sold together with a Caravaggio of a carafe of flowers, since lost but much admired, and a music piece by Bernardino Licinio. Payment was made on 13 May 1628 by Monsignor Prospero Fagnani. Because the three pictures went as one lot, no price can be assigned to this canvas even if the lot total is recovered. - **1650-01-07** The Richelieu estate sale, Paris, Estate of Cardinal Richelieu, 7 January to 8 February 1650, lot 996 - Estimate: None recorded - Hammer: 1,030 livres tournois - With premium: No buyer's premium existed. The figure is the price paid. - Bought by the duchesse d'Aiguillon, Richelieu's niece, out of her uncle's estate. This is the only figure in the picture's first three centuries that is unambiguously a price for this painting alone. - **1947** Private sale, Kendal, Joe Cookson to Surgeon Captain W. G. Thwaytes - Hammer: GBP 100 (private treaty, not a hammer price) - With premium: None. This was not an auction and no premium applies. - Reported by The Times on 29 January 1952. Five years later the picture was in the Metropolitan Museum. It is listed here because it is the last recorded price before recognition and the most useful single number in the object's market history, but it must not be read as an auction result. ## Open questions - Where was the picture between 1675 and the 1920s? Two hundred and forty-five years are unrecorded, including the entire eighteenth century and the Napoleonic dispersals. - How and when did it reach England, and had it been in another British collection before David Burns bought it in the 1920s? - What did the Metropolitan Museum pay Surgeon Captain Thwaytes in 1952? The Whitehaven News headline of 31 January 1952 referred to a fifty thousand pound picture, but no transaction figure is published in the sources consulted. - What did the 1628 Del Monte lot fetch, and can a value be apportioned to this canvas out of a lot that also held a lost Caravaggio still life and a Licinio? - Is the surviving copy of this composition the one Mancini commissioned in 1614-15, or a different copy? The Met's curators note that the surviving version introduces changes Mancini would have been unlikely to accept. - Where is the lost Caravaggio of a carafe of flowers that was sold in the same lot in 1628? - Is the lutenist a specific individual, and if so which? Camiz's proposal of a castrato in Del Monte's employ is an argued identification, not a documented one. ## Sources - [1] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, object record 435844, Caravaggio, The Musicians, accession 52.81. Consulted for the tombstone, the catalogue entry, the full provenance, the exhibition history and the bibliography, which supplies Baglione 1642, Bellori 1672, the Burns inventory of 1933, Mahon 1952 in the Burlington Magazine and in Paragone, Longhi 1952, Baumgart 1952, Baroni 1952, Nicolson's editorial note of April 1952, The Times of 29 January 1952, the Whitehaven News of 31 January 1952, the New York Times of 29 May 1952, Rousseau 1953, Camiz 1988, Boyer and Volf 1988, Maccherini 1997, Lorizzo 2006 and Sickel 2009-10. - [2] The Metropolitan Museum of Art Open Access API, object 435844. Consulted for isPublicDomain, primaryImage, medium, dimensions, artist dates, accession number and credit line. - [3] The Metropolitan Museum of Art Open Access API, object 437986, Caravaggio, The Denial of Saint Peter, accession 1997.167. Consulted to verify open-access status and the tombstone of the comparison plate. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.