# The Duet [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [MOLENAER, Jan Miense]() - Date: 1601-1650 - Technique: Oil on panel, 42 x 51 cm ## Commentary The painting shows two well-dressed young people in a somewhat sparsely but, nonetheless, expensively furnished interior. The young man plays a lute and the woman a cittern - an instrument like the lute, dating from the Renaissance, but with brass rather than gut strings, giving it a brighter, louder sound. The figures have been identified as Molenaer himself, and Judith Leyster, a fellow painter from Haarlem, whom he married in June 1636. The painting is probably a marriage portrait, an allegory of conjugal harmony. <p> <table align=left cellpadding=5 border=1 width=320 bgcolor="\#99cccc"> <tr valign=middle><td><img src="/support/gif/listen.gif" border=0 valign=middle> Suggested listening \(streaming mp3, 12 minutes\):<br><a href="\#" onClick="w=window.open \('/music1/18\_cent/vivaldi\_mandolin\_concerto.html', 'newWin', 'scrollbars=yes,status=no,dependent=yes,screenX=0,screenY=0,width=350,height=350'\);w.opener=this;w.focus\(\);return true"><b>Antonio Vivaldi: Concerto in G major for two mandolins and orchestra, RV 532</b></a> </td></tr></table> ## Related artworks - [A Quack and His Assistant]() - [Allegory of Vanity \(detail\)]() - [Amorous Couple in an Inn]() - [Battle between Carnival and Lent]() - [Drinking Peasants]() - [Interior with a Violinist]() - [Interior with Children Drinking and Mischief-Making]() - [Painter in His Studio, Painting a Musical Company]() - [Peasant Wedding]() - [Peasants in an Inn Playing "La Main Chaude"]() - [Peasants in an Inn Playing "La Main Chaude"]() - [Peasants in the Tavern]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()