Group Playing Music in a Renaissance Palace

Dirk van Delen was a notable architectural painter, whose reputation was due to his church interiors, fantastical palace perspectives and festive companies. His early work was influenced by Hans Vredeman de Vries (1527– c 1606).
In Delen’s painting A Company making Music, all the perspective lines converge on a point just above the red panache of the fashionably dressed gentleman in front of the organ, in the centre group. The strict structure of the hall is that of the late Renaissance. There are splashes of colour in the staffage figures, which Delen either had specialists add to his paintings, or himself copied from other artists’ works or modelled on figures from these.

HABERSATTER Thomas: Dirck van Delen, Group Playing Music in a Renaissance Palace, object description for the exhibition "Masterworks. Residenzgalerie Salzburg" (23.2.-3.7.2022)