A young woman descends a staircase dangling a page of sheet music from her right hand. She looks down at a young man tuning a cello. He is seated in front of a spinet and rather incongruously wears a hat. Above is another young man looking on at the proceedings from an arched landing. The young woman’s pet dog greets her at the bottom step. Close examination supported by technical evidence indicates that the artist changed his mind about the decoration on the wall immediately above the spinet. At first he placed a picture in that area, the right half of which included a nude figure while the left half may have been concealed by a partially drawn curtain. He then painted this out by applying a thin layer of grey pigment, but a later restorer misread this passage for a hanging map such as that appearing in The Listening Housewife by Nicolaes Maes (RCIN 405535). This visual confusion has since been corrected.

The subject of The Cello Player is love: the choreographed poses of the two figures, the emphasis placed on the shared pleasures of music, and the presence of the dog are the usual ingredients of such a scene. The disconsolate observer on the balcony, whose pose is traditionally related to melancholy, is perhaps a frustrated lover. The underlying sense of dalliance, so knowingly portrayed in the somewhat languid entrance of the young woman into the room, would also have been underscored by the painting hanging above the spinet if the artist had chosen to retain it.

Signed on the sheet of music held by the girl: 'G. Metsu'

Catalogue entry adapted from Enchanting the Eye: Dutch paintings of the Golden Age, London, 2004