Voice, decorum and seduction in Florigerio's Music Lesson

The co-called Music Lesson (c.1530-50) by Venetian artist Sebastiano Florigerio presents an enigmatic musical scene that has thus far eluded wholly convincing interpretation. This article seeks to revise and extend previous efforts, placing the scene in the context of contemporary views on the decor...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEarly music Vol. 38; no. 3; pp. 361 - 368
Main Author Shephard, Tim
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford Oxford University Press 01.08.2010
Oxford Publishing Limited (England)
Subjects
Florigerio, Sebastiano
Madrigals
Music education
Musical aesthetics
Musical beauty
Musical criticism
Musical meter
Musical performances
Musical register
Musicology
Renaissance music
Visual artists
Vocal music
Womens songs
Venice Italy
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Summary:The co-called Music Lesson (c.1530-50) by Venetian artist Sebastiano Florigerio presents an enigmatic musical scene that has thus far eluded wholly convincing interpretation. This article seeks to revise and extend previous efforts, placing the scene in the context of contemporary views on the decorum of musical performance. It offers a Petrarchinspired analysis of the text to the song represented in the painting, as a way of re-reading the dynamics of the scene; and argues that the painting allegorizes questions of music and morality relating to gender and old age. However, it finds that the allegory is playfully undermined by the (beautiful) physical reality of the painting. As a whole, the work represents important aspects of what one might call the aesthetics of musical performance in early to mid16th-century Italy.
Bibliography:ark:/67375/HXZ-GS4R9NC4-Q
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ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
content type line 23
ISSN:0306-1078
1741-7260
DOI:10.1093/em/caq054