A genre portrait
A wide, mischievous, perhaps ironic smile lights up the whole of the lutist's face, giving it enormous life. The natural spontaneity that the picture exudes is undoubtedly due to the fact that the artist studied a real man, the same model who is found in several other of his pictures. However, this is not strictly speaking a portrait, although Hals became famous for these too. Portrait commissions were restricted to the upper classes of society-the nobility, the middle classes, or perhaps men of letters who had themselves painted in conventional, rather static poses. The portrayal of "little people" from the lower classes-peasants, merry drinkers, or loose women-obviously did not have the same purpose of social recognition. In fact these pictures, which belong to what are known as genre portraits, were often the means of making a moral judgement on the pleasures of the senses and their attendant dangers. Thus this lutist might well be an allegory of hearing or a lesson about the vanity of music, which by definition is ephemeral.