The association between music and courtship, familiar in Dutch genre painting, is here underlined by the presence of the rose, a symbol of love, on the table. There is a painting in the background, the only visible part of which shows two bare legs. Both the style and the costume suggest that the picture was painted in about 1665-70. Schalcken\'s early work was in the style of his teacher Gerrit Dou and this picture is closely based on Dou\'s domestic scenes.