Woman Playing a Guitar by Vouet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, January 2023

Title: Woman Playing a Guitar

Artist: Simon Vouet (French, Paris 1590–1649 Paris)

Date: ca. 1618

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 42 × 29 7/8 in. (106.5 × 75.8 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Purchase, 2017 Benefit Fund; Lila Acheson Wallace Gift; Mary Trumbull Adams and Victor Wilbour Memorial Funds; Friends of European Paintings and Henry and Lucy Moses Fund Inc. Gifts; Gift of Julia A. Berwind, by exchange; Charles and Jessie Price, Otto Naumann, Mr. and Mrs. Richard L. Chilton Jr., and Sally and Howard Lepow Gifts; Charles B. Curtis Fund; and Theodocia and Joseph Arkus Gift, 2017

Accession Number: 2017.242

Created during his years in Rome, this painting reveals Vouet’s abiding interest in the work of Caravaggio with its dramatic lighting and psychological engagement as a woman averts our gaze while suggestively pushing the guitar to her breast. After his return to Paris in 1627, Vouet abandoned the moody atmosphere and bodily presence of paintings such as this in favor of clear light, sculptural bodies, and jewel tones. Although not among the French Royal Academy’s founding members, many of his students became that institution’s most influential voices.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/747607