Rommel-Pot Player: Detail, faces of children at lower left

Detail, faces of children at lower left ; The smiling rommel-pot player in this painting by Frans Hals has gathered around him an audience of amused children offering him coins. The children delight in the appalling sounds emitted by this lowly instrument, which is made of a pig's bladder stretched over an earthenware jug half-filled with water. A reed is bound in a small pocket in the middle of the bladder and moved up and down to produce a rumbling sound. Played by impoverished street musicians, rommel pots were particularly associated with the pre-Lenten celebration of Shrovetide, here indi... Mehr ...