The Guitar and Courtly Life: The Agliardi Triptych

di VICTOR COELHO tratto da The Baroque Guitar: Players, Paintings, Patrons, and the Public in The World of Baroque Music. New Perspectives, edited by George B. Stauffer, Indiana University Press, Bloomington & Indianapolis, 2006.

Analogies, metaphors, hidden and conflicting meanings, obsessive attention to detail mixed with tricks of the eye, reality and symbolism, sound and silence, and love and death—these qualities and contradictions abound in the exquisite still-life paintings by the painter, musician, and priest Evaristo Baschenis (1617-1677). One could say that Baschenis the priest influenced the conviction, precision, faithfulness, and the sanctity of the simple objects found in these works, while Baschenis the musician sought fantasy, passion, and even self-gratification. These two extremes find their common ground in Baschenis the artist. Of the many hundreds of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century paintings that depict guitars and lutes, the musical portraits by Baschenis are of special importance because of their unusual detail and rich musical symbolism. Let us examine the three panels of Baschenis’s largest and most famous work, the Agliardi Triptych, painted around 1665 and named for the family that commissioned the piece and is depicted in it. The paintings allow us to more fully understand the guitar’s position within domestic settings as well as the qualities that were attached to the instrument by its owners. In addition, Baschenis’s accuracy in rep-resenting such minute (but important) details as the guitar maker’s label allows us to gauge the lasting value that was placed on these instruments, both as objects of sound and as objets d’art (Bayer 2001). Although Baschenis is a household name in his native town of Bergamo, an important city for art north of Milan, he remains relatively unknown to the general public. He was not a prolific artist, and very few of his paintings are found outside private collections in Italy. His works are limited almost exclusively to still-life representations of instruments and food. Baschenis was never employed as a court artist, and therefore we do not find in his work the grandiose political and dynastic themes drawing on mythological or classical subjects that are typical of seventeenth-century courtly painting. On the contrary, in his portraits Baschenis concentrated on things that he owned - especially the instruments that he played, which were of such value to him that they become humanized through the art of portraiture. Baschenis captured the instruments as they aged, like a living person, with the passing of rime. Today, his paintings are studied as a rich source of information about lute and guitar construction, instrumentation, and musical aesthetics. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century artists were aware of the rich symbolism that was attached to musical instruments, and this is why lutes, and occasionally guitars, are prominent in the genre known as the natura morta, or still life. With its usual representations of ripe and rotting fruit, wilting flowers, half-filled wine glasses, cobwebs, and absence of humans, the still-life genre was dedicated to exploring symbols. Common themes attached to lutes were death and Eros (the god of love), but also, in particular, vanitas - the transitory nature of life and the evanescence of vanity. This was most often represented by a broken string, by the lute strings facing down, or by the appearance of an old score lying unused. The symbolism of guitars is less complex. Like the lute, it was commonly associated with love. But its presence in a Baroque allegorical painting (and in opera) usually signified lust and licentiousness (once again a common connection with the modern electric guitar!). And for some conservative authors the guitar signified just that. The writer Pierre Trichet wondered in 1640 whether the guitar was so popular in France because “it has a certain something which is feminine and pleasing to women, flattering their hearts and making them inclined to voluptuousness?” (Trichet c. 1640, I: 94). Metaphysical and sexual metaphors notwithstanding, in the end what makes the Agliardi Triptych so “musical” is Baschenis’s experience as a practicing musician. The artist owned several lutes and guitars, among other instruments, and in the first panel of the triptych, he reveals himself autobiographically, not as a painter or even priest (though he is dressed like one), but as a competent keyboard player, perhaps playing an accompaniment. To the painter’s left and playing the archlute is the twenty-year-old Ottavio Agliardi (b. 1645), the youngest son of Camillo Agliardi (1604-1674), commissioner of the portrait. The Agliardi family was of the oldest and most noble clans in Bergamo, and they had considerable influence in the city during the seventeenth century. As is typical of his approach, Baschenis provided an accurate and persuasive musical scene: Ottavio holds the lute correctly, with his tight hand in a position that is recommended by all writers on lute technique. Being a noble family, the Agliardi cultivated music as an important part of their education as well as their cultural identity. The other instruments lying on the table - a guitar, bass viol, and small mandola - suggest that Ottavio is skilled on these as well, and that these expensive instruments are owned by the family. Their inanimate position suggests the passing of time, in which the music is slowly being silenced as players leave the room. The music scores, with their folded edges and worn appearance, clearly indicating signs of use, also underscore this theme, as if the pieces have been played for the last time. Finally, the Anatolian rug covering the table adds an exotic flavor to the scene and represents yet another of the prized possessions owned by the Agliardi. The guitar is painted with great care, with part of its vaulted back lying off of the table. Upon closer inspection one can notice other important details about the instrument’s construction: the back is multiribbed (made up of many thin ribs), and the bridge has its two characteristic “moustaches” on either side. We also see the strings and the silk strap dangling listlessly. On the sheet of music protruding from the folder between the guitar and viol, a few lines of manuscript tablature are visible, perhaps indicating that these are original compositions. Even the music books are accurately painted with regard to format, proportion, and notation (Italian tablature, but not alfabeto). Moving to the middle panel of the triptych, we encounter an especially haunting depiction of “silence.” The instruments, including two lutes, a cittern, mandola, spinet, and guitar, ali appear dead. They He face down, the traces of their beautiful harmony memorialized by the distant echo of a few visible fragments of music. The piece of fruit on the spinet is beginning to spoil, and there is a fly (mosca in Italian, which is very similar to musica, music) on the music under the lute on the left. The fly’s short lifespan may be another contribution to the vanitas conceit. This guitar, with its flat back without ribs, is different from the one on the first panel and may be a French model. Baschenis also provides a good view of the guitar’s tied frets along the neck. One of the most brilliant effects the artist uses to convey the passing of time is the thin layer of dust that appears on the backs of each of the instruments. This dust includes visible tracks left from fingers streaking through it. On one level, this is a clear reference to the scriptural passage of “dust to dust.” But on another level, the streaks also suggest the sensual caress of fingers against a lute’s back, combining a tactile element to the senses of taste and smell, represented by the apples and flower stacked on top of the guitar. The most elegant panel of the triptych is the third, which shows the remaining two Agliardi brothers, Alessandro (b. 1636) with the guitar, and the eldest, Bonifacio (b. 1635), “looking somewhat haughtily towards the painter and his brother” (Bayer 2001, 100). This scene offers a window into the cultured milieu shared by the two brothers, in which the guitar plays a central role in their pastimes and creative moments. Alessandro plays yet another type of guitar, an exquisitely made instrument with a thin neck, a style of early seventeenth-century guitar that was used more for strummed playing rather than for plucking. Indeed, Baschenis has captured Alessandro in the midst of executing an index-finger strum while forming a C-major chord with his left hand. The partly drawn curtains convey an atmosphere of intimacy, appropriate for a solo guitar. The gorgeous inlay on the guitar neck and elsewhere is itself a work of art, and, most importantly, Baschenis even reproduces the guitar maker’s inscription, “Giorgio Sellas a la Stela in Venezia.” This identifies the instrument as one built by the great seventeenth-century lute and guitar maker Giorgio Sellas, whose workshop was found “under the sign with a star” in Venice. Along with the musical performance by Alessandro, Baschenis includes a still life setting on the table that includes yet another guitar, an archlute, and various books whose titles are visible. These demonstrate the range of possessions owned by the Agliardi brothers, and the things that were especially dear to them. With the titles of the books, one can further extrapolate the educational background of the Agliardi brothers and their extra-musical interests, giving us valuable information on the type of person who took up the guitar in the Baroque. Three of the books are poems by the seventeenth-century Roman Aurelio Orsi, the brother of the painter and acquaintance of Caravaggio, Prospero Orsi. Another book is a treatise on nobility by the author Andrea Tiraquellos, and a final volume is a legal tract by the authors Ubaldis and Canus (Bayer 2001, 98).