Two Allegories of Music painted for a virginal from the Liechtenstein collection in Vienna: Deciphering their function, sources, author, patron and symbolism

Résumé En

Two grisaille panels preserved in Vaduz-Vienna, Coll. Liechtenstein, from the same unknown painter, and dating around 1515-1540, have respectively for subject Apollo and the Muses, and Lady Music surrounded by Jubal, Pythagoras and Guido d’Arezzo. They are traced since 1712 as coming from the Prince Karl Eusebius von Liechtenstein. They were briefly commented by two scholars specialized in music iconography: Albert Pomme de Mirimonde (1968), who believed that they were the sides of a cassone and neglected to identify the male figures, and Gabrielle Frings (1996) who considered this panels as part of a harpsichord lid, and related some elements with one of Gaffurio’s plates in Theorica musicae (1492) but missed the figure of Guido d’Arezzo. This contribution aim to analyze in detail the multiple sources used in these compositions (including Raffaelo Sanzio, Gaffurio, Virdung), establish that these panels are the cover and flap of the outer case of an Italian rectangular virginal, suggests that they were commissioned by the Gonzaga, proposes as attribution the hand of “Polidoro”, a painter at the court of Mantua, and finally evokes how the materiality of the decoration of a now lost instrument, originally visible to both the musician and the audience, could contribute, explicating Musica instrumentalis and Musica practica, to sublimate the sensory, symbolic and intellectual power of music in the context of humanist court art.