Voice, decorum and seduction in Florigerio's Music Lesson

• Published in: Early music Vol. 38; no. 3; pp. 361 - 368
• Main Author: Shephard, Tim
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• 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
• DOI: 10.1093/em/caq054
• ISSN: 0306-1078

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.