In the 1620s in Roman circles, a definite change came about in the subject matter of musical paintings. The representation of figures playing musical instruments in 'cultivated' domestic interiors (the direct descendants of Caravaggio's Lute Player and Musicians) disappeared. Within the space of a very few years they were replaced by large numbers of representations of concerts in public places and 'popular' locations.These themes were explored by Tournier in such works as the Drinking Party with a Lute Player, in which boisterous groups of figures sit around a table in a tavern. This painting is a perfect example of what the seventeenth-century German historian Joachim van Sandrart called the 'Manfrediana methodus', or Manfredi's method. According to Sandrart, Bartolomeo Manfredi's followers preferred to paint 'soldiers who played cards, musicians who played various instruments and other similar half-length figures.' Tournier, one of the most important French Caravaggist painters active in Rome during the 1620s, was undoubtedly ruments in 'cultivated' domestic interiors (the direct descendants of Caravaggio's influenced by Manfredi.Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 2 minutes):Franz Schubert: An die Laute (To the Lute) D 905