A U S T R A L I A N V I O L A D A G A M B A S O C I E T Y

Homer The Lironist: P.F Mola, Art and Music In The Baroque

Figure 1 shows Pier Francesco Mola’s the lirone is closer in terms of general construction Homer dictating (1663 – 6), in which the poet and playing technique to the viola da gamba.4 of antiquity is shown dictating to an amanuensis It differs from the viola da gamba most while accompanying himself on the lirone.1 In significantly in the shape of its pegbox, which this paper, I intend first to draw on a range of in the case of the lirone is most often in the documentary evidence to outline the ‘real’ shape of a leaf with frontal, rather than the history of the lirone. Secondly, I want to consider viola da gamba’s lateral, pegs. Seven contemporary some of the ways in which the painting can be instruments survive, the best, and largely read on a symbolic level. In particular, I want to unmodified, of which was destroyed in the draw attention to ways in which musical theorists Second World War and is known only in of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries photographs.5 !is unusually shaped instrument, constructed a wilfully inaccurate archæology of or one very like it, was evidently the model on stringed instruments in the Baroque in order which Mola based his depiction.6 Of the three to further a polemic on the alleged antiquity contemporary treatises to show the lirone, and superiority of those instruments, and I only Prætorius’s shows an instrument with a hope ultimately to show why Mola placed the leaf-shaped pegbox and lateral pegs (fig. 4). lirone, invented at the start of the sixteenth Mersenne and Kircher show an instrument century, into the hands of a poet dead almost that, although similar in terms of general two and a half millennia. construction, features a scrolled pegbox (figs. 5 !e native repertoire of the lirone is and 6); this shape is not attested in any surviving confined to the two intabulated examples instrument. shown in figs. 2 and 3. !ese examples reveal a Although shape is an unreliable indicator surprising number of things about the technique of the identity of a lirone,7 three further seven- of the instrument, but they barely attest to the teenth-century paintings show the Prætorius- widespread use we know ‘il più armonioso type instrument: Young woman holding a lira da instromento’2 enjoyed for about two hundred gamba, attributed to Ferdinand Bol (1653, years. Further, while they show that the lirone Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum),8 an was primarily used to play chords, they do not anonymous, Apollo with lirone (date, location illuminate the range of settings in which it was and dimensions unknown),9 and Jan Roos’s played or the way in which its society understood Apollo charming the animals (1614 – 16, Genoa: it. In this first section, I will draw on musical Palais).10 In the absence of a standardised treatises, documentary evidence from musical design amongst the seven surviving instruments, scores, contemporary novelle, diaries and festival the form shown in all of these paintings can be records to build an image of the lirone’s position taken as the canonical form of the instrument. in its own society.3 Mola’s painting has a special status in this !e lirone is a bowed and fretted chordophone, group, as it is the only one to show the bowing having between nine and twenty strings strung technique and left-hand position, the latter in over a very flat bridge, and two bourdon strings sufficient detail that the chord being played off the fingerboard. Although technically the can be identified tentatively.11 Lironi are also lower-voice counterpart of the lira da braccio, depicted in a number of other sources where

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they are drawn roughly and without regard to are contained in the records of the Scuola di the specifics of instrumental construction. San Giovanni Evangelista in ,19 and the Figure 7 shows an example, Armonia from Scuola Grande di San Rocco hired as many of Ripa’s Iconologia. six lironists until 1631, attesting to the widespread !e lirone appears to have been invented use of the instrument in sacred music.20 !e by Atalante Miglioritti, a lira da braccio student lirone accompanied the singing of the Miserere of Leonardo da Vinci.12 Miglioritti appears to during the services of the Florentine Compagnia allude to his invention in a letter to Francesco dell’Arcangelo Raffaello in 1583 and 1584, on Gonzaga in October 1505: the latter occasion played by Caccini, who sang while playing the lirone.21 It also seems to have I introduce a new, unheard of and unknown style of playing, with a new and unknown type of lira. I shall add strings so that there are been significant in the earliest oratorios. twelve, some attached to the tailpiece and some on the fingerboard, in Maugars refers to having heard the instrumental perfect and consummate harmony.13 music of the oratorios of the Roman Oratorio Although the first recorded use of a lirone del Santissimo Crocifisso played by an ensemble dates from 1559, it is clear that the instrument of ‘an organ, a great clavessin, a lirone, two or quickly established itself in sacred and secular three violins and two or three archlutes’. 22 music, particularly in Florence and .14 Accounts of the solo singer accompanying !e Venetian traveller Marcantonio Michiel his or her own singing loom large among the records its use banquets at the court of Pope descriptions of the lirone’s use and, indeed, Leo X, including during a banquet for St John contemporary treatises frequently note how the Baptist’s day, 1520, when Leo’s court was the lirone is ‘excellent with the voice’.22 In this treated to a work played by eight singers, eight way, Mola’s painting can thus be seen as a faithful lironists (probably the same people), seven record not only of the specifics of instrument flutes and a .15 !e lirone was used construction and playing technique, but also of during the 1589 celebrations for the marriage the performance practice of the instrument. In of Ferdinando de’Medici and Christine of this second part of this paper, I will show how, Lorraine, when it was played during the while remaining faithful to the tradition of intermedii for La pellegrina by two of the most depicting Homer, Mola’s painting offers a celebrated players of the day, Guilio Caccini falsified archæology of the lirone that contributes and Alessandro Striggio.16 It also appears to to a general polemic on the superiority of have featured in domestic settings. Andre bowed string instruments. Maugars, in his Reponse faite a une curieux, Depictions of Homer in during the refers to a trio of women who played and sang seventeenth century are, in the words of ‘more than thirty different airs’ in a group Manuela Kahn-Rossi, ‘piuttosto raro’.24 I know comprising a lirone, a theorbo and a harp. the theme to have been explored just ten times Straparola’s collection of novelle, Le piacevoli in Italy during the course of seventeenth notti (1553), similarly describes the performance century, most of them from the hand of Mola of a madrigal by five women who sang and himself:25 played simultaneously.18 1. Pier Francesco Mola (Rome: Galleria !e earliest direct references to the lirone Nazionale di arte antica, 1663 – 6, oil

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on canvas, 94.5 x 132 cm, inv. 192): !is white reproduction, appears to bear the painting, giving perhaps the most detailed same relationship to the Pushkin Museum depiction of a lirone, shows a half-length painting detailed in (4) as the Dresden Homer, crowned with laurel, eyes closed painting (2) does to the Galleria Corsini and with his face turned towards the (1) painting. !e subject of the Pushkin heavens, singing while playing the lirone. Museum painting is faithfully replicated !e poet’s verses are taken down by an here. A half-length Homer sits on the left amanuensis located at the left of the picture. of the painting, crowned with laurels, and The text written by the scribe cannot be with an open book before him. A very distinguished. The scene takes place in a young amanuensis sits on the right of sketchily drawn landscape. the painting, evidently taking Homer’s 2. Pier Francesco Mola (Dresden: Gemälde- words down. As in the Pushkin Museum gallerie, 1663 – 6, oil on canvas, 95 x 131 painting, the poet’s eyes and mouth are cm, inv. 715; see fig. 1): A copy of the open. A vaguely sketched dark background picture described above, differing insigni- can be seen behind the figures. !e only ficantly from it, although described by significant difference with the Pushkin Gianni Papi as being of less high quality.26 Museum painting is the posture of the left 3. Pier Francesco Mola (Moscow: Pushkin hand, which rests palm down on the table. Museum, date unknown, oil on canvas, Again, no instrument is present.27 88 x 100 cm, inv. 171): !is painting shows 5. Pier Francesco Mola (Ariccia: Palazzo a half-length Homer, crowned with Chigi, 1660s (?), oil on canvas, 176 x 105 laurels, on the left of the painting and an cm, inv. 1220): This painting, one of a amanuensis on the right, taking down his series of allegories of the senses, was verses. No instrument is present. Homer’s omitted from Cocke’s catalogue raisonée of eyes are open, his face not turned towards Mola’s works but is given to the artist by the heavens, and he has an open book on a Petrucci on the basis of documentary table before him, obviously redundantly evidence and, indeed, the physiognomic for a blind poet. His right hand rests across type is identical to that used elsewhere by the book, while his left hand, palm up and the artist for old philosopher/poet figures running parallel to the picture plane, is elsewhere. Homer is shown crowned with evidently to be understood as being held laurels, blind, in a reclining position in a in a gesture of instruction. In view of sketchily drawn landscape, singing while its deviation from the general patterns playing an extremely awkwardly drawn of Homer iconography, one might be viola da gamba (?).28An amanuensis is not tempted to question the identification of present. Homer’s right hand is shown on the poet as Homer in this painting. the fingerboard of the , although his 4. Pier Francesco Mola (Chicago: Art Institute reclining position means that the right- of Chicago, c. 1650, oil on canvas, 71.2 x hand posture is unorthodox. His left hand, 96.5 cm): !is painting, which I have only holding a bow, is executing a tirer stroke been able to view in a small black-and- using an underhand bow hold. !e hold

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is drawn incorrectly, without the second of a bow played in what is presumably finger on the hair of the bow. !is work intended to be read as an underhand bow came to my attention quite late and it has hold, but without the second finger on been difficult for me to believe that Mola, the hair. On the right of the picture, an who got the depiction of the lirone and its amanuensis is shown, taking Homer’s playing technique so right, could have got verses down in a book.32 a viola da gamba and its playing technique 8. attributed to Luca Saltarello (Turin: so wrong. Clearly a viol would be difficult, Galleria Sabauda, early 1640s?, oil on if not impossible, to play adequately in this canvas, dimensions unknown, inv. 111): reclining position.29 !is painting, in a highly effective Carra- 6. Pier Francesco Mola (Milan: Koelliker vagesque style, shows Homer on the left Collection, 1663 – 6, oil on canvas, 70.5 playing a six-stringed viola da braccio, x 58.5 cm, inv. LK 502): According to played by being held across the torso, i.e. Petrucci, this is the ‘sola immagine del not in the usual position (the one shown volto del poeta a far protagonista, senza la by Raphael in the Parnassus of the Stanza coreografia di strumenti, scrivani e lembi della Segnatura) on the left shoulder. di paesaggi’.30 Indeed, Homer is shown Homer is shown as a bearded man, here with the physiognomic type Mola crowned with laurels, blindness indicated reserves for the philosopher/poet figure, by closed eyes, with his face slightly turned eyes closed and crowned with laurels but towards the light source from the upper without the usual props of instrument left. He is presumably singing while and amanuensis, and located against an accompanying himself, his verses being undefined dark background. Although taken down by an amanuensis at right. light falls on him from the upper left, his Unlike some other depictions of this face his not turned towards the heavens.31 subject, the background is not a land- 7. Circle of Pier Francesco Mola (Milan: scape; instead, an undifferentiated dark Koelliker Collection, date unknown, oil background is used.33 on canvas, 128 x 174 cm, inv. LK 0806): 9. (Venice: Galleria dell’ Exhibited in Mola e il suo tempo (Arricia, Accademia, mid-1630s, oil on canvas, 102 2005), this work shows the bearded figure x 81 cm): !is work, too, is in a Carra- identified as Homer, crowned with laurels, vagesque style, and shares some affinities on the left-hand side of the painting. Eyes with the Mola Milan painting (number 5, open, and with his gaze fixed on a point above). A half-length, it shows a laurel- at the upper right edge of the painting, crowned Homer, eyes closed, mouth open Homer is singing while playing a four- in the act of singing and playing a violin, stringed, unfretted instrument presumably illuminated by a strong light source falling of the violin family, but similar in size to from the upper left of the picture, towards a tenor viol, with f-shaped sound holes. which his face is turned. A dark back- !is instrument in played in the gamba ground is used, and there is no amanensis position, the sound produced by means present.34

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10. Agostino Scilla: !is work is mentioned Homer and Apollo in the iconographic tradi- by Kahn-Rossi but without further tion is clearly intended to suggest that Homer reference. I have not been able to trace this is in the grip of the furor poeticus, the ‘poetic painting, and it is not discussed further madness’ of the Muses of which Plato speaks here.35 in Ion and Phædrus, and which was sought !e nine paintings I have been able to view by Renaissance humanists and poets such as share considerable congruencies. All show an Marsilio Ficino.40 Raphael’s depiction established old man crowned with laurels. In most, his a trope in the representation of Apollo that blindness is indicated by closed eyes (the only can be demonstrated with reference to Dosso exceptions are the Moscow Mola (3), the Dossi’s Apollo and Daphne (mid 1520s, Rome: Chicago Mola (4) and the painting from the Galleria Borghese) and Gerrit van Honthorst’s circle of Mola (7)).36 Most also show his face Orpheus (1614/16, Naples: Palazzo Reale di turned upwards, generally in the direction of Capodimonte): in each of these paintings, the the light source (the exceptions are the protagonist sings while playing an instrument Moscow Mola (3), the Chicago Mola (4) and (in both cases, a lira da braccio) with his face the Milan Mola (5)). An amanuensis is present turned to the heavens. in five of the nine paintings. Only three of the !e lira was also an attribute of the paintings (two of them versions of a single Apollonian arts of Armonia, Musica, Poesia, treatment of the Homer subject) dispense with Poema Lyrico and Eloquenza and of Erato, the presence of an accompanying instrument, the muse of poetry, as seventeenth-century although the identity of that instrument differs emblem texts make clear. In describing Poesia, from painting to painting: in the Rome Mola for example, Cesare Ripa refers to ‘a beautiful (1) and Dresden Mola (2), it is a lirone; in the woman…crowned with laurels…with three Ariccia Mola (5), it is a ‘viola da gamba’; in the boys at the sides flying around her, one carrying Milan painting from the circle of Mola (7), it is the lira and the plectrum’ (fig. 8).41 Mola’s, an unidentified stringed instrument; in the Saltarello’s and Preti’s paintings, therefore, Saltarello painting (8), it is a lira da braccio stand ultimately in the tradition of depictions and in the Preti painting (9), it is a violin.37 of Apollo; by conflating Apollo and Homer, Physiognomically, the figure of Homer they make Homer into Apollo’s own, a vehicle in these paintings is dependent on the most for his ‘poetic madness’ and, at the same time, a famous image of Homer, that by Raphael in the personification of Poesia and Eloquenza. Parnassus (Vatican: Stanza della Segnatura), Raphael’s Apollo accompanies himself on which also shows a laurel-crowned old man, the lira da braccio. !e lira da braccio is well blindness indicated by his closed eyes, with his documented from the start of the sixteenth face turned to the heavens as he sings.38 As an century. Like the lirone, its bass counterpart, it iconographic type, however, the representation too is represented by a very small notated of Homer is dependent on the Apollo at the repertoire (a few examples of chord patterns in centre of the Parnassus: Apollo looks heaven- the Pesaro manuscript), but what survives wards and, like Saltarello’s Homer, plays a lira indicates that it was used to play chords and to da braccio.39 At a symbolic level, the identity of accompany the improvisation of ‘epic and narra-

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tive verses…strambotti in ottava rima…capitoli guitar-like instrument common in Spain and and other narratives in terza rima, odes, sonnets, imported into Italy around 1493 in a bowed ballate and other poetic forms’.42 !e skill of version under the pontificate of the Spanish improvising verses to the accompaniment of Alexander VI Borgia. Sources throughout the the lira da braccio was particularly praised in da seventeenth century that use the word viola Vinci who, in the words of Vasari, was ‘the most remain equivocal about exactly which instrument talented improviser in verse of his time’.43 they mean.45 For example, in 1495 Marco Although we have seen instances of solo singers Nigro, Isabella d’Este’s Prefect of Munitions, accompanying themselves on the lirone, there is refers to instruments that he identified as ‘viole no mention in contemporary records that it ovver lire’; but whether he intends instruments served the same function as the lira da braccio we would identify as viole da gamba or lire da in accompanying the improvised verses of the braccio is unclear.46 Similarly, in 1541, the player-singer, as Homer appears to do in these accounts of the Venetian Confraternità di paintings. !ere is also no indication that Santa Maria della Carità indicate that five violins were used in this way, as Preti’s painting ‘sonadori de lironi’ were hired, but that they seems to suggest. In the final section of this played instruments that were referred to as paper, I want to show how seventeenth-century ‘soran’, ‘basso’, ‘tenor’, ‘contra alto’ and ‘bassetto’ – theorists regarded the taxonomy of stringed these can only have been viole da gamba, which instruments and how this taxonomy allows us existed in a range of sizes, as the lirone existed to conflate depictions of the lira da braccio with in only one size.47 As Woodfield has noted, ‘the the lirone and other bowed stringed words ‘lire’ and ‘viole’ and ‘lironi’ and ‘violoni’ instruments. !is taxonomy will also reveal [are] to some extent interchangeable in the first something of the way in which seventeenth- part of the 16th century’.48 !e use of this century theorists were able to privilege the imprecise terminology would seem to indicate history of bowed stringed instruments. that there is no inconsistency in Preti’s, Mola’s I mentioned at the start of this paper that and Saltarello’s showing a violin, a lira da braccio, the lirone is a ‘bowed and fretted chordophone’. or a lirone in Homer’s hands – seventeenth !is is of course a modern taxonomy of the century eyes did not regard these as different instrument: the lirone was not conceptualised instruments; they were all viole. in this manner in its own time. Rather, the Finally, what is a violin, lira da braccio or lirone was classified in the seventeenth century lirone, all of them viole and of modern as one of the viole, stringed instruments provenance, doing in the hands of Homer at distinguished by being waisted, mostly fretted all? In answering this question, it is significant and – crucially for the fabled archæology of to note that in 1620 Francesco Rognoni Taeggio the viole – played with a bow.44 Fig. 9, from (Selva de varii passagii) refers to the inventor of Prætorius’s Syntagma musicum, shows many of the lirone as a ‘huomo di gran guiditio’, whose the instruments that might be referred to under name he evidently did not know. Further, neither the general rubric of viola. !e word viola Miglioritti nor anyone else is specifically named appears to be an Italianised corruption of the as the inventor of the lirone in any contemporary Spanish word vihuela, used to describe the document.50 Rather, theorists devised an

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elaborate and false archæology for the viole of highly significant: this was a debate that raged which the following, from Silvestro Ganassi’s throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth Regola rubertina, is an early and characteristic centuries as the bowed strings – first the viol example: and then the violin – sought hegemony in

I have given some thought about which instrument was the older, the European musical life. Mola’s painting is a lute or the viol…My view [on this matter] is based on a recollection contribution to that debate but, as quotations of seeing, among Roman antiquities, a composition of several figures sculpted in marble. One of the figures held a viola d’arco similar to a above make clear, the placement of the lirone in viol; suddenly I realised that the viol must predate the lute. According Homer’s hands is, paradoxically, another example to authorities on the subject, Orpheus is said not to have played the lute but a beautiful bowed , the lira, which is similar to the of Mola’s ‘realism’. To the seventeenth-century viol in that it has a bow and strings. Furthermore, there is a connection eye, the lirone was not merely representative of in the name ‘lira’ or ‘lirone’ which people often call a viol, though most call it a ‘’. A more prevalent usage is, however, ‘lirone’ or ‘lironi’ antiquity, as some modern commentators have for several together, instead of ‘viole’ or ‘violoni’.51 asserted:54 it was antiquity.55 Mola’s painting is Ganassi identifies the of Orpheus as thus not one of Homer playing a lirone. Rather, it stands in the tradition of Raphael’s an ‘istromento di corde, & arco’; that is, a viola. Parnassus !e lyre was in fact played with a plectrum and can be seen as a depiction of Apollo, in the and, despite Vincenzo Galilei’s rebuttal of the grip of the furor poeticus, playing his lyre. idea that the bow was of ancient provenance as An irony lurks at the centre of Mola’s early as 1581, the fiction that ancient stringed Homer dictating. !e last recorded performance instruments were also in the seventeenth- using a lirone occurred in 1669, and in 1699, viole 56 century meaning of that word was difficult to the last lironist died in Florence. In 1710, shake.52 As late as 1687 the French violist Jean the last work that requires its use had been written57 and in 1716,58 the appears for Rousseau dedicated almost 20% of his Traité lirone probably the last time in a court inventory. In de la viole to a dissertation on the history of the viol, which he commenced by noting: 1666 when the paint was drying on Homer dictating, the lirone was actually becoming the !e viol appears to us as one of the newest instruments…but, if all that the ancient authors tell us concerning the instruments of the earliest instrument of antiquity it had so long striven times is examined – of their shapes and the way in which they were to be. played – the viol is found to be one of the oldest.53 I would like to acknowledge the assistance and encouragement of the following in the preparation of this paper: Dr David Marshall (Art !at both of these authors situate the history, University of Melbourne), the European Visual Cultural alleged antiquity of the viola within the context Reading Group (University of Melbourne) before which this paper was given in November 2006, and Laura Vaughan. of a disputation on the antiquity of the lute is JOHN WERETKA

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Figure 4 Michael Prætorius, Lirone from Syntagma musicum (Wolfenbüttel, 1619)

Pier Francesco Mola, Homer dictating (1663 – 6) Dresden, Gemäldegallerie, Oil on canvas, 95 x 131 cm.

Figure 5 Figure 2 Marin Mersenne, Lirone Scipione Cerreto, Intabulation from Harmonie universelle (Paris, 1636) from Della prattica musica vocale, et strumentale (Naples, 1601)

Figure 3 Figure 6 Le Baillif, Laudate Dominum Athanasius Kircher, Lirone from Marin Mersenne, Harmonie universelle (Paris, 1636) from Musurgia universalis (Rome, 1650)

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Figure 4 Michael Prætorius, Lirone from Syntagma musicum (Wolfenbüttel, 1619)

Figure 7 Figure 8 Cesare Ripa, Armonia Cesare Ripa, Poesia from Iconologia (Padua, 1611) from Iconologia (Padua, 1611)

Figure 9 Michael Prætorius, Viole from Syntagma musicum (Wolfenbüttel, 1619)

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1 According to Cocke, the attribution of this painting to Mola is modern. No source 13 ‘…introduco nuovo, inaudito et inusitato modo di sonare, con nuova et inusitata is given for this attribution, however (Cocke, 1972, p. 55). Pier Francesco Mola was forma di lyra, con cio sia io adguinga corde al comprimento al numero di XII, born in 1612 in Coldrerio, Switzerland, the son of an architect. His family moved parte nel suo tempo oportuno dal piede, et parte della mano tastabilii in perfecta et to Rome in 1615 or 1616 where, except for periods in northern Italy between 1633 consummate consonantia’. Text given in David, 1999, p. 63. – 40 and 1641 – 7, Mola was to remain for the rest of his life. His first commission, 14 David examines the repertoire closely (David, 1999, pp. 69 – 75). for a fresco cycle in the Cappella Nuova in the church of the Madonna del Carmelo 15 Blackburn, 1992, p. 18. in Coldrerio, dates from 1641. According to a letter of Albani, Mola studied with 16 David, 1999, pp. 71 – 2. the painter for two years and, although it is unclear from the content of the letter 17 Text given in David, 1999, p. xxiv. itself when this occurred, it is believed to have been in the early 1640s, probably in 18 Elias, 1989, p. 164. 1642. Mola established himself in Rome in 1647, quickly establishing a reputation 19 Elias, 1989, p. 165. for himself there, attested by the presence of several of his works in Roman collec- 20 Arnold, 1959, pp. 239 – 40. tions. His latter years were marred by continued ill health and a protracted lawsuit 21 Hill, 1979a, pp. 113 – 4. that arose over work he executed and which was subsequently destroyed for Prince 22 David, 1999, p. xxiii. Camillo Pamphili at Villa Valmontone. He was elected rector of the Accademia di 23 Quote from Mersenne, 1957, pp. 265 – 6. Cardano writes in De tranquilitate: ‘…the S. Luca in 1662 (one of the other candidates was the perhaps more famous Bernini), lira blends well with every other instrument, but about all with the human voice’ resigning a year later because of ill health. He died in 1666. Passeri says that Mola (Miller, 1973, p. 202). Cardano also describes the performance of a five-part lament was apprenticed to the Cavaliere d’Arpino but, in addition to his known study with (the favoured genre of the lirone) in which the singer, Cardano himself, evidently Albani, it is clear that his painting owes more to north Italian, often specifically compressed the four lower parts into a single lirone part and sang the superius Venetian and Bolognese, models including the work of Guercino and Titian. part (Miller, 1973, p. 204). Elias notes of Straparola’s Le piacevoli notti: ‘It is of 2 Quote from Rognoni’s Selva de varii passaggi (1620) in David, 1999, p. xiv. One of particular interest that Straparola calls for lironi to accompany the singing on the key things the intabulations show is that the technique of the instrument relied several occasions, since relatively little is known of this instrument’s use. As the bass to a significant extent on the use of jeu barré (barred fingerings). Chords played on counterpart of the lira da braccio, it was well suited for vocal accompaniment. In Le the lirone customarily use four or five adjacent strings, owing to the flatness of the piacevoli notti it is played in an informal social setting which suggests that it was in bridge. Further, the intabulations show that a combination of open and stopped common use at the time of the book’s publication (1553 for the second volume).’ unisons was used in most chords. (Elias, 1989, p. 165). !ese texts also make clear that the lirone often featured in 3 !e lirone is served by a small theoretical literature; in most of the treatises given in ‘broken’ consort settings of mixed instrumentation. !e use of the lirone in such David, it is mentioned only cursorily. !e most extensive treatments of its playing ‘orchestral’ settings is addressed in Brown, 1973. technique are in Mersenne and Cerretto. 24 Kahn-Rossi, 1989, p. 195. Kahn-Rossi notes elsewhere that ‘!e idealised portrait 4 !e similarities between the lirone and the bass viola da gamba were noted by several of the blind mythic Greek poet, drawn in half-length alone or in the act of dictating theorists: ‘!e figure of the lyre [i.e. lirone] is very little different from that of the to a scribe, it a subject that emerges in the 1630s in Rome and elsewhere (Genoa), viol. Nevertheless its neck and the fingerboard of the neck are a great deal larger, and of which we encounter examples from the 1640s until about the 1670s’ (Kahn- inasmuch as it is covered with fifteen strings…’ (Mersenne, 1957, p. 263) and ‘!e Rossi, 1989, p. 314). large lyra…is constructed in the fashion of a bass viol, except that the body and neck 25 Kahn-Rossi, 1989, p. 314. None of these paintings has been discussed in any depth are rather broader because of the greater number of strings’ (Prætorius, 1986, p. 56). in the scholarly literature. Mola’s Rome and Dresden paintings are discussed in 5 !e surviving instruments are discussed in David, 1999, pp. 54 – 62. Cocke, 1972, p. 42 and 55 – 6 and Kahn-Rossi, 1989, pp. 195 and the preparatory 6 ‘!e instrument has a peculiar doubly curved outline and corresponds quite closely drawing in Rowlands, 1964, p. 274. Passeri’s lengthy biography of Mola does not to the one show in P.F. Mola’s painting’ (David, 1999, p. 61, quoting the collection mention his treatment of this subject, and the patronage pattern is not elucidated catalogue of the Heyer Collection). (see Passeri, 1976, pp. 390 – 97). I know of only two other treatments of this 7 Mersenne notes: ‘As to the neck and pegs, one makes of them whatever shape he painting anywhere in Europe during the seventeenth century, one by Rembrandt wishes, as well as the table and the other parts; for it is of little importance provided and the other, dependent on the Rembrandt, by Aert de Gelder. !e Rembrandt that the lira [lirone] and the other instruments have a good harmony’ (Mersenne, (Mauritshuis, den Haag), dating from 1663, was painted for Don Antonio Ruffo 1957, p. 263). and was damaged by fire in the eighteenth century. Cocke suggested that this 8 !is painting shows a young woman, standing and holding a lirone, which is painting which, if a drawing in the Stockholm Nationalmuseum accurately describes supported by a table (i.e. she does not play the instrument). A leaf of music shown its original state, showed Homer dictating to an amanuensis but not playing an lying on the table in front of the lirone. If the music could be identified, it might instrument, was the inspiration for Mola’s treatment of the subject (Cocke, 1972, determine the way in which the subject of the painting should be interpreted. Even p. 55). It is clear that Rembrandt’s painting could not have provided the inspiration without this information, the presence of a snapped string presumably indicates that for Mola, so dissimilar are the treatments of the subject and this theory has thus the picture is to be understood as a vanitas. Any future identification of the music rightly been discredited by Kahn-Rossi (Kahn-Rossi, 1989, p. 195). !e Rembrandt should support this. is discussed in Gerson, 1968, pp. 138 – 9 and 503 and reproduced on p. 141. 9 !is image was last discussed and reproduced in Disertori, 1940. Nothing further is 26 Petrucci, 2005, p. 156. !is painting was attributed to Valentin in an inventory of known about it. 1754 but was returned to Mola by Voss (see Kahn-Rossi, 1989, p. 195). 10 !e paintings are discussed in cursory detail in David, 1999, pp. 38 – 41. 27 !e picture is reproduced in Maxon, 1970, p. 260 and a brief physical description 11 David, 1999, pp. 90 – 1. David writes: ‘One can assume with confidence that is given on p. 284. !is physical description, and a record of the exhibitions of the he[Mola] had direct contact with the musicians of his time and that he knew of the painting, are also given on p. 317 of Chicago, 1961. lirone and its playing technique, as he lived in Rome during the period in which it 28 !e instrument type is rather difficult to determine in this painting. !e instru- flourished and the oratorios were being developed’ (David, 1999, p. 39). ment has five strings, drawn reasonably accurately with regard to thickness, f-shaped 12 David, 1999, p. 66. sound holes, an extremely low-lying bridge, apparently fretted, but with a high-

10 AV d G S J O U R N A L V O L . 6 , 2 0 0 7 A U S T R A L I A N V I O L A D A G A M B A S O C I E T Y

shouldered design not typical of the viol family. !e instrument is also quite broad. 47 Blackburn, 1992, p. 11. In sum, it is unclear whether a viol or small five-stringed is intended. 48 Woodfield, 1984, p. 181. David also explores this topic (David, 1999, p. 75 – 6). 29 Petrucci, 2005, p. 48 – 52. !e four paintings comprising the series (Giacinto, 49 David, 1999, p. xiv. allegoria dell’Olfatto, Bacco, allegoria del Giusto, Narciso, allegoria della Vista and 50 David, 1999, p. 67. Omero, allegoria dell’Udito) furnished the apartments of the Cardinal Flavio Chigi 51 Bodig, 1981, p. 23. Note that the word Ganassi actually uses for what Bodig in the Chigi palace at Ariccia and are attested in documents from around 1667 translates as ‘viol’ is violone, although is clear from the way Ganassi discusses the – 9. !ese documents refer to Homer as ‘una figura che suona il violone’. !e instrument elsewhere that the instrument he intends is indeed the six-stringed viola paintings all appear to be more or less finished, the Homer the most finished of the da gamba. Cardano, in De musica, also makes the link between the lirone and the group, and all have been subject to cropping. ancient lyre clear when relating the story of Timotheus of Miletus: ‘…when it 30 Petrucci, 2005, p. 148. seemed that Timotheus of Miletus was about to be reprimanded for having a lyre 31 Petrucci, 2005, p. 148. !e work is not otherwise discussed in the literature. with too many strings and for corrupting the ancient music among the Laconians, 32 Petrucci, 2005, p. 156. !e work is not otherwise discussed in the literature. and when someone wanted to cut away the superfluous strings, Timotheus pointed 33 Saltarello’s painting is discussed in Santarelli, 1993, pp. 56 – 7. !e painting was out that among them there was a representation of Apollo which had a lyre with the once attributed to Mola and is now given, ‘con notevoli cautele’, to Saltarello (see same number of strings as a magadis. But the magadis had twenty strings [i.e. the Santarelli, p. 57). same number as the lirone], as Anacreon says…’ (Miller, 1973, p. 175). 34 !is painting is discussed in Kahn-Rossi, 1989, p. 314 and Spike, 1999, p. 351 52 Winternitz, 1979a, p. 87. Pierre Trichet is one of the few later theorists to concur – 2. Preti’s painting was at one time attributed to Mola and was once also given to with Galilei: ‘!e bow, which is used in instrumental music, is so called because it Caravaggio (see Kahn-Rossi, 1989, p. 314). is curved like a little arch; the Latins call it arcus and radiolus, but not plectrum or 35 Kahn-Rossi, 1989, p. 314. plecten, as some have said. !is matter has some need of clarification, because I find 36 !e blindness of Homer as an iconographic theme is very briefly traced in Panofsky, in the ancients and some other fine authors the word plectrum is often used, but not 1962, p. 109. to signify a bow, but another object of an entirely different sort, which is used to 37 For a further brief discussion, see Kahn-Rossi, 1989, p. 195. set the strings vibrating’ (Lesure, 1957, p. 182). Bernardi (Ragionamenti musicali, 38 ‘On the other hand, it is not inopportune to observe here that Mola was inspired , 1581) advances a more typical view: ‘Safo Eristea, the ancient poetess, in his depiction of the blind Homer by the iconography adopted by Raphael in invented the bow strung with horse hair and was the first to play the violin [violino] the Parnassus. !e poet of the Corsini [i.e. Galleria Nazionale di Palazzo Corsini] and viola [viola] such as we use today, and this was 624 years before the advent of our version, bearded and crowned with laurel, is in fact very similar to the sixteenth- Lord Jesus Christ’ (Italian source cited in Winternitz, 1979b, p. 198). century model, which would surely have been known from engravings.’ Kahn-Rossi, 53 Green, 1979, p. 284. Later in the same treatise, Rousseau quotes a passage from 1989, p. 195. Philostrates the Younger that describes a painting of Orpheus playing a cytharam 39 Cocke, 1972, p. 42: ‘!e instrument which he [Homer in Mola’s painting] plays is by using a plectrum. Rousseau’s gloss (‘Orpheus, he says, holds the viol [Viole] on derived from the viol [sic] that Apollo plays in the Raphael.’ his thigh with his left foot on the ground and marks the beat of what he plays 40 Socrates says in the Phædrus: ‘And of the divine kind [of madness] we distinguished by tapping his right foot on the street. Holding the bow [l’Archet] firmly in his right four parts, belonging to four gods, taking the madness of the seer as Apollo’s hand, he draws it across the strings…’) confirms not only that he believed the lyre of inspiration, that of the mystic rites as Dionysus’, poetic madness, for its part, as the Orpheus to have been the viol of his own day, but that the plectrum was a bow. See Muses’, and the fourth as that belonging to Aphrodite and Love’ (see Plato, 2005a, Green, 1979, p. 294. Note that Ripa’s figure of Poesia, shown at fig. 21 is shown p. 49) and in the Ion: ‘For all good epic poets recite all that splendid poetry not by depicted with a lira and a plettro that is clearly a bow. virtue of a skill, but in a state of inspiration and possession’ (see Plato, 2005b, p. 55). 54 Among them Imke David, who on several occasions refers to the lirone as ‘[a] symbol For Marsilio Ficino, see Voss, 1992, pp. 27 – 9 and Walker, 1953, pp. 100 – 2. [for] figures of ancient myth such as Apollo or Orpheus’ [my emphasis] (David, 41 Ripa, 1976, p. 430. For the lira as an emblem of Armonia, see Ripa, p. 28; as an 1999, p. 7). emblem of Eloquenza, see p. 140; as an emblem of Musica, see p. 366 – 7; as an emblem 55 Winternitz writes of the lira [da braccio and da gamba]: ‘!e invention of the lira of Erato, see p. 370 – 3; as an emblem of Poesia, see p. 430 – 2; as an emblem of was ascribed to the ancients by authors of the 15th and early 16th centuries, and Poema lirico, see p. 433. Ripa says that the three boys are not shown ‘in order not to even Bernardi in 1581, while 16th-century emblematic literature, when discussing crowd the space’; instead their attributes are shown next to Poesia. the lira, quotes indiscriminately from both ancient and contemporary sources, and 42 Brown, 2001, p. 743. regards both the ‘lira con l’archetto’ and the ‘lira toccata dal plettro’ as instruments 43 Vasari, 1987, p. 262. of antiquity. Bronze plaques of the late 16th and early 17th centuries show Apollo 44 Boyden notes that the word viola was extended to cover the lira da braccio, lirone, with an ancient lyre and a modern bow’ (Winternitz, 1979a, p. 86). viola da braccio, soprano di viola da braccio (sometimes used to refer to the violin), 56 !e last known lironist was the Medici court lironist, Pietro Salvetti, who is viola da gamba, violone, and vihuela d’arco. With the exception of the soprano di viola shown with his instrument in a painting by Gabbiani now held in the musical da braccio, these are all fretted instruments (Boyden, 2006, p. 688). Blackburn notes instrument collection of the Accademia in Florence (previously held in the Galleria that the following words could be used to describe bowed strings, without any Palatina). Salvetti is recorded replacing an organ part with his playing of the lirone in a attempt to differentiate between them necessarily being intended: viola, viola da performance in 1669 (see David, 1999, p. 79). archo, viola da gamba, viola grande da archetto, violone grande, viola spagnola, lira, lira 57 !e work was Pasquini’s Cain et Abel, which was included in the collection of da braccio, and lirone (Blackburn, 1992, p. 11). Cardinal Antonio Barberini (David, 1999, p. 80). 45 Elias, 1989, p. 165. 58 Headley, 1984, p. 529. 46 Prizer, 1982, p. 102.

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Platonists’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 16, no. 1/2, Brown, 1973: Howard Mayer Brown, ‘Sixteenth-century instrumenta- 1953, pp. 100 – 20. tion: the music for the Florentine intermedii’, Musicological studies and Woodfield, 1984: Ian Woodfield, !e early history of the viol, Cambridge: documents, 30, 1973, pp. 39 – 56. Cambridge University Press, 1984. Boyden, 2006: David Boyden, ‘Earlier meanings of the term ‘viola’’, in New Winternitz, 1979a: Emmanuel Winternitz, ‘!e lira da braccio’, in Musical Grove dictionary of music and musicians, London: Macmillan Reference, instruments and their symbolism in Western art: studies in musical iconology, 2001, Vol. 26, pp. 688 – 9. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979, pp. 86 – 98. 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Minerva Access is the Institutional Repository of The University of Melbourne

Author/s: WERETKA, JOHN

Title: Homer the lironist: P. F. Mola, art and music in the baroque

Date: 2007

Citation: Weretka, J. (2007). Homer the lironist: P. F. Mola, art and music in the baroque. Chelys Australis, (6), 1-12.

Publication Status: Published

Persistent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11343/34665

File Description: Homer the lironist: P. F. Mola, art and music in the baroque