BELLANGE, Jacques
(b. 1594, Nancy, d. 1638, Nancy)

Hurdy-Gurdy Player

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Etching
Royal Library, Windsor

Bellange's most important works all deal with religious themes; but he also designed a few genre compositions of which the most remarkable is the Hurdy-Gurdy Player. Here Bellange shows an interest, exceptional for him, in the ugliness and deformity of the blind beggar; but there is nothing unusual in this simultaneous inclination towards the opposite extremes of elegance and repulsiveness.