In the 1840s Menzel produced numerous illustrations for Franz Kugler’s ever popular History of Frederick the Great. Menzel’s intense work on the times and character of Friedrich II, who reigned from 1740 to 1786, was to bear fruit, even apart from the book illustrations which made Menzel famous. Along with the self-contained “society piece,” Die Tafelrunde, the Flute Concert may be regarded as one of the paintings where Menzel, in free and full possession of his powers as a painter, deepened…