A beautifully decorated clavecin occurs in the picture of _The Young Scholar and His Sister_, by Cocx (Coques) in the Cassel Gallery. The room is decorated with hangings of blue leather, ornamented with gold, above which hang pictures in ebony frames. The young man is seated at a table beneath the window and his sister is at the clavecin opposite. The latter is exquisitely painted, the top showing the story of Apollo and Marsyas. [Illustration: PLATE XXII.—_Design for Goldsmith’s Work, by Adrian Collaert._ ] In the latter part of the sixteenth and throughout the seventeenth centuries, the bass viol was much played in England, France and the Low Countries and was called the _viol da gamba_. This instrument frequently appears in the works of the Dutch masters, in which not unfrequently ladies are represented playing it, as, for example, in Jan Verkolje’s (1650–93) _Musical Party_ in the Rijks Museum, Amsterdam, where the lady is seated upon a low-backed leather chair with her foot upon a foot-warmer. The instrument is turned from the spectator. The lute, which so frequently appears in early pictures, was superseded about 1600 by the theorbo, or double-necked lute with two sets of strings and two sets of tuning pegs. The theorbo is represented in Terborch’s _Lute-Player_ in The Cassel Gallery; a lute also appears in Van Mieris’s _The Painter and his Wife_ in the Hague Gallery, a charming domestic picture, in which the painter is teasing a puppy and its mother. The lute lies carelessly on the table. Brassware contributed very greatly to the brightness and cheerfulness of an apartment during the Renaissance period as well as during the centuries before and after. The chandelier with its graceful curves appears in many a picture; and the best art of the day was devoted to the hearth-furnishings. Dogs and andirons assumed large proportions and considerable decorative importance. An interesting Flemish dog of the sixteenth century is represented in Fig. 28. It is similar to those metal andirons on the hearth in Plate XXIV. Besides human and animal figures, this kind of _dinanderie_ assumed many other forms. Other kinds of _dinanderie_, consisting of candlesticks of human figures in contemporary costumes are shown in Fig. 29 and Fig. 30. CHAPTER V SEVENTEENTH CENTURY (FLEMISH) Renewed Italian Influence—Rubens: his Studio, his House, his Pupils, his Influence, his Successors—Seventeenth Century Woodcarvers— Developments and Tendencies of Furniture—Crispin Van Den Passe— Rembrandt’s Goods and Chattels—Old Belgian Houses—The Pitsembourg— Kitchens—Leather-hangings—Tapestry—Marquetry—Chairs—Masters of Ornamental Design—The “Auricular Style.”