Hendrick ter Brugghen
 (1588–1629)

Hendrick Jansz ter Brugghen  was a Dutch painter of genre scenes and religious subjects. He was one of the Dutch followers of Caravaggio – the so-called Utrecht Caravaggisti. Along with Gerrit van Hondhorst and Dirck van Baburen, Ter Brugghen was one of the most important Dutch painters to have been influenced by Caravaggio.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrick_ter_Brugghen

The Concert
About 1626
Oil on canvas
99 x 116.8 cm
National Gallery, London

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/hendrick-ter-brugghen-the-concert

We seem to have crept to within touching distance of this small group of musicians who turn towards us with surprise. The highly focused light source creates sharp highlights, intense shadows and a sense both of drama and intimacy. Dramatic lighting effects like this are now common, but in the 1620s it was a revolutionary way to paint. The man responsible for this revolution was Michelangelo Caravaggio, who was working in Rome between about 1597 and 1607.
Ter Brugghen was the first important Dutch painter to bring Caravaggio’s ideas back to Holland and this composition reveals his influence in other ways. The half-length figures crowded together within the composition and filling the pictorial space – right up to the edges of the frame – are typical of the Italian artist, as is the clarity and realism of the depiction of the grapes in the foreground.