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Harpsichord

Harpsichord with painted floral soundboard, missing its keys, strings and jacks. There is no stand. 'The outside of the case, presumably of poplar, is painted black with rather stiff garlands of flowers and leaves in two sorts of gilding. The interior of the lid is painted green and decorated with rococo scrollwork and putti, all in a greenish-yellow monochrome, apparently executed during the third quarter of the eighteenth century. The interior of the harpsichord and the keyboard surround are crudely painted with black and white arabesques to resemble vaguely the Antwerp block-printed papers commonly used to decorate seventeenth-century Flemish harpsichords and virginals. The soundboard of spruce is decorated in gouache with flowers, fruit, birds and arabesques, and contains the maker's rose as a trade mark: a winged figure holding a harp and supporting the initials I.R. Howard Schott, Catalogue of Musical Instruments in the Victoria and Albert Museum - Part I: Keyboard Instruments(London, 1978), pp. 57-58.

  • Date:
    1639 (made)
  • Maker:
    Ruckers, Ioannes
  • Collection:
    Victoria and Albert Museum
  • Inventory number:
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  • Place of production:
    Antwerp
  • Culture:
  • Period:
  • Materials:Planed, joined and painted wooden (poplar?) case with planed and partly painted spruce soundboard, with gilt lead rose.
  • Specific materials/techniques:
  • Decorative elements:
  • Inscriptions:IR 1639
  • Hornbostel-Sachs category:
  • Repository:Victoria and Albert Museum
  • Measurements:Length: 173.1 cm, Width: 78.5 cm, Height: 21.2 cm