The Supper Party

Look past the lute. Someone has a toothache.

At first, the table seems to promise only music, food and warm candlelight. A lute player turns towards a companion. Wine catches the light. Then the group at the right begins to look less comfortable: a man leans back with his mouth open while a woman attends to him.

This Honthorst supper scene circulates under broad English titles such as Supper Party. The composition with the lute player and the treatment at the right is discussed in scholarship as Cena con suonatore di liuto, or Supper with a Lute Player, around 1619–1620, in the Uffizi, Florence.

Honthorst painted more than one convivial supper. The works’ translated titles, dates and measurements are frequently mixed. Here the image, especially the musical instrument and the open-mouthed guest, identifies the scene being discussed.

The nearest diner keeps the light from becoming a simple display

A large seated man shows us his back in the foreground. His dark hat and clothing interrupt the illuminated faces behind him. He occupies a place at the table that the viewer might otherwise imagine entering.

The device creates depth through obstruction. We have to look past a body to see the gathering. The darker figure gives the bright faces a stronger presence, making the table feel like a small pocket of light within a much larger darkness.

That does not make him an outsider. His chair and position place him inside the company, although we cannot share the expression visible to the other guests. The painting gives us access and withholds it at the same time.

The lute player joins looking with listening

The musician holds the broad body of a lute diagonally before him. Its pale wood becomes one of the largest warm shapes on the table’s far side. The long neck points upward between the figures.

His head turns towards the woman nearby. The instrument tells us that music belongs to the gathering, but his expression makes the exchange social as well as musical. He is a participant in the evening, not a detached entertainer placed outside it.

Honthorst does not need to paint a legible score to suggest sound. The instrument, the opened conversation of faces and the close arrangement of the diners allow the viewer to imagine the noise of the room.

A small intervention interrupts the pleasure

At the right, a seated man tilts his head back and opens his mouth. The standing woman bends her attention towards him, while an older woman leans over his other side. His raised hand and wine glass give the uncomfortable posture an almost comic complexity.

In a scholarly discussion published by the Friends of the Pitti Palace, curator Gianni Papi reads this as a dental episode. He identifies pieces of cloth associated with the treatment and connects it with Caravaggio’s tooth-pulling imagery. That is a documented interpretation of the scene, not a diagnosis drawn from a single open mouth.

The episode changes the tone of the supper. Bodily discomfort has entered a setting of pleasure. The surrounding company does not stop existing as a cheerful gathering; the interruption becomes part of its entertainment.

The food and glasses bring the light down to hand level

The cloth, dishes and drinking vessels catch the light in smaller patches below the faces. A hand around a stem and the edge of a plate give the scene a scale we can understand through ordinary use.

These objects also connect the separated groups. Music and conversation occupy the middle; the uncomfortable guest and attendants gather at the right; the tabletop continues beneath both.

The warm illumination does not describe a uniformly lit room. Forms emerge and disappear according to their relation to the light and the bodies that block it. Darkness remains an active part of the arrangement.

A Dutch painter developed these evenings in Italy

Honthorst became known for nocturnal scenes during his years in Italy, where Caravaggio’s painting offered a powerful example of figures emerging from dark surroundings. He returned to Utrecht around 1620 with a reputation for this kind of illumination.

The Uffizi supper scenes belong to his Italian career and its collecting history. The Italian state catalogue records a large banquet associated with inventory 1890 no. 730 and measures it at 144 × 218 centimetres. Scholarly discussions connect that work with the supper containing the lute player.

A separate Uffizi work catalogued as Cena con sponsali has its own record. It should not supply a date or measurements merely because a website translates both pictures as “Supper Party”. The translated English name is less reliable than the composition and inventory.

Compare the artificial light here with the radiant infant in Honthorst’s Adoration of the Shepherds. A related command of darkness supports very different subjects: social pleasure in one image, devotional attention in the other.

Questions about Honthorst’s Supper Party

Is this The Last Supper?

No. It is a secular gathering with music, wine and an episode interpreted as dental treatment.

What is the instrument?

A lute, held diagonally by the central musician.

What is happening to the man at the right?

Scholar Gianni Papi reads the group as an episode involving a tooth problem and treatment. The man’s open mouth alone does not establish every detail of the event.

Why do titles and measurements differ online?

Honthorst made several supper scenes, and their broad translated titles are easily confused. This article concerns the Uffizi composition with the lute and the open-mouthed diner.

Sources and image credit

• Italian Ministry of Culture: Uffizi banquet, inventory 1890 no. 730, 144 × 218 cm
• Gianni Papi, Amici di Palazzo Pitti: the dental episode in Cena con suonatore di liuto
• Italian Ministry of Culture: separate Cena con sponsali record
• University of McGill thesis: Honthorst’s different Uffizi supper compositions

Faithful public-domain reproduction of The Supper Party, via Wikimedia Commons. Detail images are crops of the same historical painting; no reconstruction or upscaling.