[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >In einer eMail vom 13.11.2006 15:13:32 Westeuropäische Normalzeit schreibt >[EMAIL PROTECTED]: > > > >>Early adopter, too, if he's dressed for the period. Or maybe he's not >>smoking tobacco. >> >> >> > >I looked up Steen in the Wikipedia, and his dates are given as 1626 - 1679. >That post-dates Sir Walter Raleigh's trips to Virginia by a generation. So the >cittern player was most probably smoking the "Indian weed". > >
Or two generations. >Clay tobacco pipes play quite a prominent part in the Dutch paintings of the >17th century. They were used in still-lifes, alog with flowers and fruit, to >symbolise transience - a long-stemmed clay pipe is very easily broken, and you >can't smoke it very often before it gets bitter! > >There's an English folksong I learned recently that uses the pipe and smoking >as a sort of memento mori. The "Indian weed" - green at morn, cut down by >e'en; the lovely, white pipe, broken at a touch; foul within, requiring the >purging fire; the smoke that dissipates like human life. The last line of >each >verse is "Think on this when you smoke tobacco!" I don't think the EU >Ministers >of Health wrote the song. It has more to do with the health of the soul than >of the body. > > I know that one. James VI & I wrote a condemnation of tobacco. Got his way 400 years later :-) I just thought the dress was a bit over-antique for 17th c, especially the cittern player. But maybe he is meant to be that way, a sort of traditional dress for musician, more like 16th c. >By the way, the Wikipedia entry for Jan Steen shows a self-portrait of him as >a lutenist. > > > He was probably just practicing adding a lute, the normal practice of 17th c portraitists. 'Nice, yes, but could we have her holding a lute?' 'Sure, it'll cost you 10 guilders to add a small cittern, 20 guilders for a lute, and if you want her holding a theorbo I'll need a bigger canvas and frame, so it'll be about double the original quote' David To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
