Like many artists from the Dutch city of Utrecht, Ter Brugghen admired the vividly naturalistic figures and dramatic lighting in paintings by the early seventeenth-century Italian painter, Caravaggio. These artists often dressed their figures in colorful costumes similar to those worn by street entertainers and very different from the sober, black-and-white garments worn by men and women of the time. The singer's open mouth and raised right hand, beating time, give this picture a lively and engaging sense of the moment.