COLOUR STUDY

Colour palette

#1D1107
#391E0F
#433826
#5F442C
#998870
#756450

Approximate colour proportions

#1D110725.1%
#391E0F21.2%
#43382615.4%
#5F442C13.2%
#99887013.0%
#75645012.1%

Estimated from six colour groups in the museum image, including visible paper or borders. Reproduction and lighting affect the result; these are image-area proportions, not pigment measurements.

Rogers Fund, 1952 · The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Image licence: CC0 · Museum record & image source ↗

Italy · 1597

The Musicians

Caravaggio

Date: 1597
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 36 1/4 x 46 5/8 in. (92.1 x 118.4 cm)
Country / context: Italy
Movement / tradition: European and American art
Collection: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Attribution / role: Museum attribution
Pathway: European and American art ↗

ABOUT THIS WORK

This early Caravaggio painting makes music a setting for closely grouped figures. Read it alongside the later religious scenes in the artist guide to follow how bodies, gestures and directed light carry a narrative.

Original educational overview · based on the linked museum record

Place in the artist’s career

Compare the youthful gathering in The Musicians, the outward gestures and table space in the 1601 Supper, and the darker martyrdom of 1606–7. Related canvas-painting methods serve very different encounters. Trace where light isolates flesh, fabric and expressions, and how surrounding darkness changes the emotional pace.