Framed in mystery: painting tells story of doomed Norfolk family

Posted on 5 July 2018

Professor Jonathan Wainwright (Music) analysis of a lost 17th-century painting

Years of research uncover lost 17th-century treasures and the song of a pale little girl.

Jonathan Wainwright, a professor of music at the University of York, has pored over enlargements and identified the song of the little girl as an appropriately doom-laden piece by the Scottish composer Robert Ramsey, “Charon, O Charon, heare a wretch opprest”, written in 1630. Only one manuscript survives in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, but the music in her hand was so meticulously painted that he could read it.

Wainwright has also traced a second musical reference, though in the painting the tiny book held by the satyr on the golden stem of the shell cup was too minute even for his eyes. However, on the real cup, coming on loan from the Prinsenhof museum in Delft, he could read the words of a popular 16th-century round song – again dealing with death – “Je prens en gré la dure mort”.

You can read the full Guardian article here.