17th -20th centuries · Silent music, geometry and vanity

The musicians' private instruments become silent architectures where strings, wood, scores and dust evoke music as much as its absence.

Still life with instruments asserted itself in the 17th century, when the autonomous genre developed in the Netherlands and southern Europe. In Bergamo, Evaristo Baschenis devoted most of his career to lutes, violins and scores: their complex perspective, dusty surfaces and immobile strings suspended time. In the vanities, skull, watch, book and instrument remind us that the pleasure of the senses and fame are fleeting. Chardin then transforms the attributes of music into royal compositions of great sobriety, while Vallayer-Coster gives materials and reflections a decorative breadth. In the 19th and 20th centuries, violin and mandolin also become motifs of illusion or modern construction. The "Still lifes with instruments" selection notably compares Still life with musical instruments - Evaristo Baschenis and Vanity with books, musical instruments and skull - Edwaert Collier. His reading favors figures.

Painting a silent instrument means making absent music visible: the curve of the wood, the tension of the strings and the score become pictorial rhythm.