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- Title
Musical instruments in the Venetian home: contextualizing Marietta Robusti's self-portrait.
- Authors
Hurley, Bláithín
- Abstract
In her self-portrait of c.1578, Marietta Robusti, daughter of Tintoretto, and a successful artist in her own right, represented herself not with the tools of her chosen profession but with a keyboard instrument and holding a music book. Much has been written about how this painting, and others like it, reflect the necessity for well-bred 16th-century young women to promote their musical skills. However, little effort has so far been made to connect the world this image represents with the documentary evidence available in Venetian domestic household inventories. The current article analyses post-mortem and other inventories in order to establish the musical instruments found in 16th-century Venetian homes, and the rooms in which they were found and potentially used. Such inventories, through their employment of simple language and stock descriptive adjectives, offer strong insights into ordinary lives in Renaissance Venice, including the domestic lives of the otherwise invisible musical women of the Venetian household.
- Subjects
MUSICAL instruments; KEYBOARD instrument music; KEYBOARD instruments; SELF-portraits; DOCUMENTARY evidence; YOUNG women; ART history
- Publication
Early Music, 2023, Vol 51, Issue 1, p109
- ISSN
0306-1078
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/em/caac074