Manfredi’s early biographers mentioned that he painted numerous half-length figure scenes. The surviving works attributed to him include concert parties, card players and fortune tellers. This picture, along with all the others now known, is attributed to Manfredi entirely on stylistic grounds. The figure types appear in several other compositions given to Manfredi. However, contrary to popular belief, such compositions as this were the invention of Manfredi himself. His usually quoted source, Caravaggio’s own concert party, Una musica, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is an early work with very few shadows and is unrelated to Manfredi. Pictures of this Manfredi type, even though entirely secular in their subject matter, were popular with ecclesiastical patrons and collectors, as well as aristocratic patrons.

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