Artibus et Historiae no. 10 (V)
1984, ISSN 0391-9064Up
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ERASMUS WEDDIGEN - Jacopo Tintoretto and Music
Tintoretto's love of music mentioned since Vasari's time, has never actually been proven, even though "auditive" elements in his works are ever present. The reattribution of The Concert of the Muses (with the miniature scene of the metamorphosis of the Pierids) in the Munich State Collections and the evidence of a single example of a legible score - a "canzonetta" from 1573 by the composer Giovan Ferretti - in the Sextet of Nymphs in Dresden, permits us to analyze the musical horizon of Jacopo, the represented instruments (and even some which Tintoretto has been said to have "invented" himself), his hypothetical familiarity with melomanic Venice, his own musical ability and theoretical background.
The new dating post quem of the programmatic Musica in Dresden (about twenty years later than commonly accepted) - the painting perhaps reflects the friendship and spiritual influence of the great music-theoretician Gioseffo Zarlino - may bring certain changes in the still imprecise dating of many of his major works.
