Bagpipe

"Bagpipe Player" is a slow picture, with none of the lush color notes or drama of "Saint Sebastian."

An Artist of Dual Allegiances Karen Wilkin 2011

Oberlin's painting is now installed at the National Gallery, Washington, as the focal point of a miniature exhibition, "Larger Than Life," paired with the gallery's recently acquired ter Brugghen "Bagpipe Player" 1624, a robust half-length figure that exemplifies the secular side of the artist's practice as brilliantly as "Saint Sebastian" does the religious side.

An Artist of Dual Allegiances Karen Wilkin 2011

Fortunately for Washington audiences, Arthur Wheelock, curator of Northern Baroque paintings at the National Gallery, asked the Ohio college to extend St. Irene's visit to the capital to show her alongside the gallery's own ter Brugghen, "Bagpipe Player, 1624," a major recent museum purchase.

At National Gallery, two paintings by one Dutch master add up to a sublime exhibition 2011

The three figures in "Saint Sebastian" and the lone Bagpipe Player fill their respective canvases, carving out space with their bodies.

An Artist of Dual Allegiances Karen Wilkin 2011

Its current display enables the National Gallery to highlight the recently acquired "Bagpipe Player," one of ter Brugghen's great genre pictures.

At National Gallery, two paintings by one Dutch master add up to a sublime exhibition 2011

Wheelock thinks "Bagpipe Player" was painted for one of the large aristocratic homes around Utrecht where the hosts might have presented plays and readings with musical accompaniments.

At National Gallery, two paintings by one Dutch master add up to a sublime exhibition 2011

To modern eyes, "Bagpipe Player" is indeed an odd picture.

At National Gallery, two paintings by one Dutch master add up to a sublime exhibition 2011

But the main event is the juxtaposition of the St. Irene, a monumental and intricately composed religious tableau of tremendous pathos, and "Bagpipe Player," a less ambitious picture about the simple pleasures of music.

At National Gallery, two paintings by one Dutch master add up to a sublime exhibition 2011

Until two years ago, "Bagpipe Player" was in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne, Germany, but the work was revealed to have been seized by the Nazis in 1938 from the collection of Dr. Herbert von Klemperer of Berlin.

At National Gallery, two paintings by one Dutch master add up to a sublime exhibition 2011

At the National Gallery of Art in Washington, "Larger Than Life" united two superb works by the 17th-century Dutch interpreter of Caravaggism, Hendrick Ter Brugghen: Oberlin College's "St. Sebastian Tended by Irene," a large-figure composition that is unquestionably the Utrecht painter's masterpiece, and the National Gallery's recently acquired "Bagpipe Player," as exemplary of Ter Brugghen's secular side as "St. Sebastian" is of his devotional aspect.

Museums Reveal Degas's Nudes and Islam's Splendor Karen Wilkin 2011