The Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music

Volume 25 (2019) No. 1

Mottos and Metaphors: Towards an Interpretation of the Emblems in Frescobaldi’s Primo libro d’arie musicali

Naomi J. Barker*

Abstract

Frescobaldi’s Primo libro d’arie musicali (Florence: Landini, 1630) is richly decorated with figural emblems, with moral and political implications. In conjunction with the poetic texts, the emblems allude metaphorically to the city of Florence and the volume’s dedicatee, Grand Duke Ferdinando II de’ Medici, and also to Frescobaldi’s Roman patrons, the Barberini family. One emblem in particular ties Frescobaldi to the Bolognese academician Adriano Banchieri. The likely intellectual agent behind the emblems’ literary and political program was the connoisseur and courtier Lelio Guidiccioni. The book reflects a courtly listening practice: reading and contemplation as well as singing and hearing.

1. Introduction

2. More on the Nature of the Problem: Socio-Cultural Context and Purpose

3. Space Fillers or Meaningful Images?

4. Emblems and Imprese: Layering Meaning

5. The Bee Topos: Pulveris iactu q[ui]escent

6. Moral and Spiritual Subjects

7. Visual Imagery and Historical Context

8. The Banchieri Question

9. Frescobaldi’s Arie and Their Intellectual Agency

10. Conclusions: Function, Use, and Reception

Acknowledgments

Figures

Appendices

References

1. Introduction

1.1 Frescobaldi’s two volumes of Arie musicali, destined to be his only Florentine publications, were printed by Giovanni Battista Landini in September 1630, just short of two years after the composer’s arrival in Florence.^[1] Frescobaldi had left Rome at the end of November or in early December 1628, having been given permission to depart by the Chapter of St. Peter’s on 22 November. He presumably arrived in Florence six to eight months after the official accession to the throne of the young grand duke, Ferdinando II de’ Medici, on 14 July. Celebration of the marriage of the grand duke’s sister Princess Margherita to Duke Odoardo Farnese of Parma followed shortly after the accession, on 14 October—an occasion marked by magnificent musical entertainments, including Marco da Gagliano’s La Flora. Frederick Hammond has suggested that Frescobaldi’s Arie were “occasioned by the predominance of vocal music at the Tuscan court and a lingering local tradition of stile recitativo” and that they were an anomaly. He notes that it is the only collection including monodies to be published in Florence between 1619 and 1635.^[2]

1.2 While the musical content of the Primo libro d’arie musicali (outlined in Appendix 1) raises some important questions, so too does the nature of this book as a material object since it contains a wealth of paratextual components. This publication is unusual in the use of figurative, in addition to purely decorative, visual elements. These elements include an elaborate title page (Figure 1), a decorative dedication page addressed to the grand duke, decorated initial letters of at least two different sorts in the song texts (those with generic imagery such as foliage or pastoral figures, and those representing cityscapes), decorative panels and blocks, and most importantly, emblems that fill substantial portions of five of the pages. The four emblems are associated with arias near the beginning of the volume (pp. 4–14) and are not accompanied by any other decorative material (apart from generic illuminated initials). From p. 15 to p. 42 there are no emblems, but other decorative materials, including initial letters decorated with cityscapes, are used. Only one item, the duet Eri già tutta mia (pp. 42–43), includes decorative elements of all three types featured here: an initial illuminated by a cityscape, an emblem, and another decoration—here, decorative blocks separating the strophes of poetry. Appendix 1 shows the placement of the decorative elements in the volume.

1.3 The only other similarly decorated music publication of which I am aware, and to which I will refer, is the Libro primo d’arie musicali by Domenico Anglesi, also published by Landini, five years later.^[3] Not a great deal is known about Anglesi. He was associated with Florence and was evidently an organist: two failed attempts to win the post of organist at the cathedral are documented. He was also the composer of three dramatic works for which no music survives, including Il mondo festeggiante, an equestrian ballet performed for the wedding of Grand Duke Cosimo III de’ Medici in 1661. A manuscript held in the library of Northwestern University containing a cantata by him alongside works of Roman provenance by Luigi Rossi, Marco Marazzoli, Giacomo Carissimi, and others, suggests that he may also have worked in Rome.^[4]

1.4 In this article I will present a hypothetical reading of the emblems printed in Frescobaldi’s Primo libro d’arie musicali. An explanation of their symbolism will be offered, in the context of the poetic texts that they accompany, followed by a collective overview of their relationship to each other and to the other visual material in the book. The resulting interpretation will allow me to make a case for the intellectual agency of the volume and to offer some suggestions as to how the book might have been used and understood at the time of its production.

2. More on the Nature of the Problem: Socio-Cultural Context and Purpose

2.1 The historical-critical framework for Frescobaldi’s aria publications demands closer scrutiny. Although printed in Florence and dedicated to Ferdinando II de’ Medici, in some respects the Arie are more Roman than Florentine, and it seems likely that the publication was conceived at least in part before the composer left Rome. Elena Ferrari Barassi has noted the stylistic relationship between Frescobaldi’s ground bass arias, especially the “Aria di passacaglia” and “Aria di Romanesca,” and arias in Roman dramatic works by Domenico Mazzocchi, Virgilio Mazzocchi, Marco Marazzoli, and Stefano Landi that postdate both the publication of the Arie musicali and the 1637 reprint of the Secondo libro di toccate containing the Aggiunta with the “Cento partite sopra passacaglia.”^[5]  John Walter Hill on the other hand has suggested that composers in the Montalto circle provided the models for the musical style of the compositions, noting that Frescobaldi was working with composers from Cardinal Montalto’s Roman household in the mid-1610s.^[6]

2.2 Frescobaldi’s treatment of text too is idiosyncratic, especially in terms of the relationship between musical and poetic phrase structures.^[7] Hill has noted that Frescobaldi’s choice of texts for the arias is unusual, and that he sets sonnets in the recitative style—something that Giovanni Battista Doni warned against doing. The arias are ordered in such a way that the first part of the volume presents settings of poetic types that were deemed to be serious (sonnets, ottave rime), all of which are set for solo voice; followed by lighter texts (mostly canzonettas), some of which are for solo voice and the remainder for two or three voices. It is noteworthy that the emblems, with only one exception, appear in the first, serious section of the volume.^[8]

2.3 The authors of many of the poetic texts remain anonymous, but those sources that have been identified do not point to the more usual Florentine poesia per musica. Instead they reflect the type of poetic texts in circulation in Rome and evident in Roman monody collections. Janie Cole has most recently attributed one of the texts in the Secondo libro to Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger, adding to the list of known authors. Buonarroti was well known as a mediator between artists and patrons and was certainly known in the Florentine court as well as in Rome, adding weight to an argument that this music incorporates both Roman and Florentine influences.^[9] Further indications that the volume was at least in part conceived in Rome will be discussed in Chapter 9 below.

2.4 By the time Frescobaldi’s two books of Arie appeared in print, the music publishing industry in Italy had been in decline for a decade, reflecting a more general economic crisis.^[10] Music printing in Florence in particular was struggling. There are only two surviving exemplars of Frescobaldi’s first book, the presentation copy in I-Fn and a second copy in I-Bc. Only a single copy of the second book survives, also in I-Bc. Perhaps by coincidence, the only extant copy of Anglesi’s Libro primo is at that same library in Bologna. A small print run is one possible reason for the low survival rate. The luxurious quality of the book and the rich symbolism implicit in the visual material located in a musico-textual context suggests a socio-cultural purpose that was not necessarily linked to the re-creation of the music in performance by its purchasers.

3. Space Fillers or Meaningful Images?

3.1 It may be argued that the mixture of visual and musical elements in Frescobaldi’s book was the result of mundane necessity and that the images are used only to fill empty spaces left by the process of typesetting songs with an inconsistent number of voices and texts of different lengths. The presence of three of the same emblems and some of the same decorative initial letters in Anglesi’s Libro primo might suggest that Landini, who was not a specialist music publisher, simply filled blank parts of pages with whatever blocks he had on hand. There is certainly nothing unusual about the decorative panels and blocks that separate strophes of texts, fill spaces at the ends of some pages, and frame the title page and the header of the dedication page. The filigree panels and smaller floral details, along with caryatid figures, swags, and wreaths with masks, cherubs, and so on are standard printer’s fare. Some of these imprints, unlike the emblems, lack clarity, suggesting that the woodblocks were worn by use when this book went through the press.

3.2 There are a number of arguments that support an opposing view, however. First, Landini, like other Florentine printers, was successful at producing high quality, luxury publications where the costs were met by a third party.^[11] He was, for example, able to produce and incorporate high quality images and scientific diagrams into his publications with some precision. Galileo’s Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo, probably his most famous product, is just one example.^[12] Other publications from the Landini press further support an argument for deliberate choice over practical expediency. Two books relating closely to activity at the Medici court provide examples. The publication of Andrea Cavalcanti’s account of the funeral of Francesco de’ Medici, brother of Ferdinando, who died at the age of twenty in 1634, and which postdates Frescobaldi’s Arie musicali, includes eight emblems, all specifically relating to time and the brevity of life and placed in specific locations in the book.^[13] The account of the funeral oration for the archduchess Maria Maddalena, who enjoyed a long and productive life, in contrast, is bare of any imagery.^[14] Second, given the extent of the culture of emblems during this period, a printer would be unlikely to use visual images that could be interpreted (or misinterpreted) by users of the book, especially a learned patron, just to fill up space. Space fillers were generically decorative and abstracted images that did not contain text. Third, if Landini was drawing on existing woodcuts of emblems to use in any of these prints, they would be apparent in other, earlier publications, just as there are many others that use the fillers comprising abstract patterns. None have come to light. The subsequent recycling of the emblems for Frescobaldi’s Primo libro in Anglesi’s Libro primo does however fit the pattern of reuse of existing materials.

3.3 Frescobaldi, too, was generally careful about what he committed to print. The choices he made regarding the printing of his keyboard music—the printing technology, whether engraved or from type; the choice of intavolatura or partitura format; and especially the revisions of his books of toccatas and the reworkings of his canzonas—all point to attention to detail in material that was intended for preservation and dissemination. Indeed, Alexander Silbiger has argued that the final edition of the two books of toccatas published in 1637 represents a deliberate attempt at a definitive “collected works” on the part of the composer.^[15] The composer was also adept at embedding intellectual challenges into his compositions. His  ricercars, fantasias, and capriccios on subjects that observe strict formulae (for example, only moving by step or following a strict solmization pattern); his verbal instructions that indicate that the performer should sing a fifth part (the “Capriccio di obligo di cantare la quinta parte senza toccarla” (1624); and his cryptic observations, such as the subtitle of the Bergamasca in the appendix to Fiori musicali, “he who plays this Bergamasca will learn not a little”:^[16] all support a view of the composer as a man comfortable with the kind of intellectual conceits that would appeal to a learned audience. The emblems in the Arie musicali, whether or not their use was directly instigated by Frescobaldi, would have appealed to the same type of audience.

3.4 In Frescobaldi’s Secondo libro d’arie musicali, printed at the same time and by the same publisher as the Primo libro but with a different dedicatee, the marchese Roberto Obizzi, there are no emblems.^[17] On several pages extra space is filled with empty staff lines, and on p. 37 the space is left blank. On p. 11 and again on p. 13, only the final cadence of an aria occupies the last four staves. These notes could have been squeezed into the preceding line, as is done on p. 29, if the space of almost half the page were needed for something else.

The function of spare staves in the Primo libro seems to be different. In one case, p. 32, they separate the end of one aria from the start of the next one on the same page. In the other they occur where an aria for solo voice is followed by a duet. There is insufficient space at the end of the aria on p. 35 for the three staves required for the start of the duet. Rather than fill the space with a decorative element, Landini chose to leave two empty staves.

3.5 The decorative fillers in Anglesi’s Libro primo (Figure 2) are of a different style from those in Frescobaldi’s Primo libro, consisting of some large floral elements and densely inked shapes rather than the standard linear and filigree patterns used in the Frescobaldi book. The differences in the layouts and visual elements between these three books point to deliberate choices.

3.6 An assumption that the visual elements of the Arie musicali are not accidental must therefore mean that somebody—the composer, the printer, or possibly even the patron—had a reason for their presence and was conceptually responsible for devising a publication that brings together image, text, and, if performed, sound. The question of agency is fundamental to a full understanding of this book, but it is also an issue for which several plausible narratives may be constructed. Understanding the meanings and uses of emblems in the context of the Arie is challenging, and we have to invoke a “period eye” in order to try to read them in a way that may have been familiar to Frescobaldi’s contemporaries.^[18] In the presence of sound, we also need an oral/aural imagination or, perhaps better, what Shai Burstyn calls a “musical-historical imagination” to try to draw out how image, text, and sound might have been perceived at the time of publication.^[19]

4. Emblems and Imprese: Layering Meaning

4.1 In the world view that was prevalent in the early modern period, almost anything from everyday objects to exotic animals might be used to represent or signal something beyond the obvious, and emblems and symbols could be found everywhere. Following the first publication of Andrea Alciato’s Emblematum liber in 1531 and its subsequent circulation in successive new editions,^[20] the popularity of the emblem book increased rapidly, finding favor in Protestant northern Europe as well as in the south, where it was adopted and adapted as an educational and moralizing tool in Counter-Reformation politics. The fusion of an epigrammatic text and a pithy motto with an arresting image could be turned to many uses; thus, emblems and books about emblems proliferated, as did the terminology associated with them. Impresa, emblem, symbol, hieroglyph, icona, and their variants in French, Spanish, and German are indicative of a Europe-wide interest in symbolic forms. Given the quantity of emblem books produced in the second half of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, it should probably not be surprising to find emblems in a printed book of music.

4.2 John Manning has outlined the difficulty of defining generically what the term emblem means over a wide geographical area and long historical time span. He points out that the emblem has “proved to be particularly vigorous in adapting itself to different uses” and that there is no such thing as a normative form for an emblem.^[21] According to Dorigen Caldwell, in the context of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Italian impresa theory, there was a distinct difference between an impresa, an emblem, and heraldic symbolism.^[22] Although writers are not entirely consistent in their definitions, what is clear is that imprese are personal devices that identify individuals and do not convey a specific message other than one that relates to that person. For Paolo Giovio in the mid-sixteenth century, an impresa required five elements: it should contain image and text; it should not be too difficult or too easy to understand; it should be attractive; the image should not be of a human figure; and the text should not be in the mother tongue of the bearer of the impresa. The “body” (the image) is subservient to the “soul” (the text).^[23]  According to Girolamo Bargagli, who described the use of imprese in the Sienese academies, it was the duty of an academician to invent an impresa. Moreover, they were so embedded in academic gatherings that they could be devised orally as a pastime or game, but their meaning had to be “natural,” not allegorical.^[24]

4.3 Francesco Caburacci, writing in 1580, discusses imprese and emblems as a form of communication, using terms that situate them in the context of rhetoric. They must represent, signify, and show (rappresentare, significare, mostrare). A simple icon represents, but for something to signify, it must have a conventionally understood meaning such as an allegory. Showing requires more complex means such as metaphors and other figures that will persuade or prove in a rhetorical sense. In Caburacci’s writings a separation between emblem and impresa starts to emerge. The emblem “shows” and can be more difficult and learned than an impresa, which is simple and allusive.^[25] Both the separation of the impresa from the emblem and the alignment of the emblem with rhetoric are echoed in seventeenth-century texts such as Emanuele Tesauro’s Cannocchiale aristotelico.^[26] Tesauro’s conflation of visual and verbal metaphor is of particular relevance in approaching a reading of emblems from the first half of the seventeenth century.

4.4 The definition of impresa in the Vocabolario della Crusca apparently refers to Giovio’s requirement that the human form should not be shown and, further, that the presence of a human form in the image makes it an emblem rather than an impresa.^[27] This definition does not seem to reflect the complexity of theories concerning imprese and emblems current at the time of its publication. Imprese that developed in various academies followed slightly different rules from those that emerged in religious circles and are different again from those that were devised for display of aristocratic status. The Vocabolario definition ignores the demand that metaphor and poetic ingenuity make connections between thought or moral message and image, so evident in sources contemporary with it, such as Tesauro.^[28] For the purposes of this article, the term impresa will indicate a sub-genre of emblem that is specific to the identity of a person or organization. The term emblem will indicate the combination of image and text to convey meaning by means of visual and textual metaphor.

4.5 In Counter-Reformation Italy, emblems became useful propaganda tools and were adopted by the Jesuits in particular. The contemplation of an image with a moral meaning was a way of concentrating all the senses on the contemplation of the Divine.^[29] Given that two of the emblems in Frescobaldi’s Arie appear at the end of the “Sonetto spirituale in stile recitativo” Dove, dove, Signor and the “Canto spirituale in stile recitativo” Dopo si lungo error, the notion of the reader reading (or hearing) the aria and contemplating an image that reinforces its moral message makes perfect sense.

4.6 We turn now to discussion of the emblems found in Frescobaldi’s Primo libro. The assumption underlying these interpretations is that the image is associated with the song that it follows, with which it shares a page in the book. The reader thus turns the pages, reading the words and music and seeing the associated emblem at the end, before the next song begins on the ensuing page. The emblems are attached to four different types of text: a dedicatory sonnet, a secular text in Petrarchan style, two devotional texts, and a secular canzonetta. These different types of poetry, too, may hint at how their associated emblems should be read. Since the first emblem to appear presents particular challenges, it will be discussed separately in Chapter 8 below; we turn first to the other three.

5. The Bee Topos: Pulveris iactu q[ui]escent

5.1 The second emblem to appear in Frescobaldi’s Primo libro follows the aria Ardo, e taccio il mio mal (see Appendix 1). It is also present in Anglesi’s Libro primo, following the song Chi si fa prigionier, the eleventh item in the volume. It represents two groups of bees, each with a clear leader, facing each other and framed by intertwining stems and leaves, with the motto “Pulveris iactu q[ui]escent” (Figure 3). The image and motto can be specifically related to a passage in Virgil’s Georgics, Book 4, that describes honey farming and the cultivation of bees. Here Virgil describes the emergence of two rival swarms in a “civil war” of bees, each led by a “king” or ”captain” (properly the birth of a young queen), and indicates that a handful of dust will calm them: “These ardent passions and these prodigious contests / a little handful of dust will lay to rest” (“Hi motus animorum atque haec certamina tanta / pulveris exigui iactu compressa quiescent”).^[30] Although the text of the motto is a slightly contracted version of the original Latin, it is one that would have been immediately obvious to a seventeenth century reader. The lines that follow refer to putting to death one of the bee “captains,” to leave the palace free for the better one to rule.^[31] The image invites the reader to ponder the consequences of warfare as portrayed by the metaphor of the bee swarms but also, as Wilkinson suggests, reminds the reader that while man is in control of the bees, ultimately he is himself subordinate to the gods.^[32]

5.2 The bee was a common topos in emblems and offered a range of themes and meanings. James Hall’s Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art tells us that the beehive is an attribute of Bernard of Clairvaux, Ambrose, and John Chrysostom, all “noted for their eloquence or mellifluous words,” and “in secular allegory it is an attribute of the Golden Age personified.” Here he refers to the conventional image of the Golden Age as a female figure crowned with flowers, with a beehive and olive branch.^[33] The sting of the bee, the selfless work of the bee in making honey, the structure of the hive and its social organization as a political model of benevolent governance, are all common themes.^[34] It does seem likely, given the motto, that the metaphor of government is what is intended here. The bee is of course also the most important part of the Barberini family coat of arms, and bees appear conspicuously on the frontispieces of several editions of Maffeo Barberini’s Poemata and in publications with Barberini dedications such as Stefano Landi’s Il Sant’Alessio. A bee even appears in three-dimensional form on the collar of a portrait bust of Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger, a Barberini client.^[35] If this emblem was meant to have a Barberini connection, the foliage on the emblem probably belonged to the laurel. Laurel sprigs and leaves appear on the Barberini coat of arms and on many artworks commissioned by the Barberini. However, laurel would also have been recognized by a Florentine as part of the personal impresa of Lorenzo de Medici.

5.3 The text of Ardo, e taccio il mio mal is an extract from a poem by Girolamo Preti (given and cited in Appendix 2). By the middle of the seventeenth century, this text was already associated with emblems, as it is included in Filippo Picinelli’s Mondo simbolico, first printed in Milan in 1653 and reprinted several times elsewhere in Italian and Latin.^[36] The poetic imagery is dominated by Petrarchan conjunctions of opposites—war and peace, faith and fear, fire and ice, death and life—all of which describe the emotional turmoil of love. The bee provides a visual parallel. It can sting but also provides sweet honey; if it stings, it also dies, but living, it works in harmony with others and produces sweetness. The intention is perhaps to remind the reader that man should have control over his emotions just as he can control a swarm of bees. Even though emotions may be both painful and pleasant, ultimately one will be subservient to another, as the bees are to the dust. Layered over this is the warning in Virgil’s Georgics about the consequences of too much passion. Following the section about swarming bees, Virgil tells the story of Aristaeus who lost all his bees as a punishment for pursuing Euridice, who subsequently died of a snake bite while fleeing from him. Both the Petrarchan source of the poetic concetto and the Virgilian narrative would have been familiar and readily understood by a seventeenth century audience.

5.4 The musical setting does little to explain the emblem, but it does reflect the Petrarchan oppositions present in both the text and image to some extent. There is neither extreme chromaticism nor especially harsh dissonance, but rapid shifts between major and minor triads serve to illustrate key concepts such as hope and death. The mobility of the third in chords also creates localized tonal ambiguity. For example, the A-natural tonal type implicit in the opening is undermined in the second bar by a C sharp that tonicizes D, which in turn tonicizes a G minor triad, all in the space of four bars. Thus, one hears opposites in the juxtaposition of major and minor sonorities.

6. Moral and Spiritual Subjects

6.1 The third emblem depicts a wood fire in a hearth with a bellows, surrounded by a stylized branch and leaves, with the motto “Depressa elevor” (Figure 4). Bellows were common objects in households, artisan’s workshops, and pre-industrial manufacturing, and their multiple uses and contexts thus allow for a range of interpretations. The bellows features in a number of alchemical emblems and in iconographic contexts in which there is either an object for the flame to heat or Cupid operating the bellows, neither of which is apparent here.^[37] There are also Ovidian sources for epigrams and mottos relating to love that use the metaphor of flame being kindled or put out by breath, for which the bellows can be seen as a substitute.^[38] The notion of the bellows as a substitute for breath is also brought out by Filippo Picinelli, who cites Virgil’s Aeneid as an example of the divine inspiration or breath of the gods on the Cumaean Sibyl and also the Christian parallel of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.^[39] The flames that accompany the bellows in this and many other depictions are a symbol of ardor, either spiritual or, as an attribute of Venus, sexual. The bellows is simply the means of increasing flames.

6.2 A popular source of imagery close to the period in question is Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia. In the 1603 edition of this book, the bellows is identified as an attribute of “Capriccio.” In his description Ripa notes that “the spur and the bellows show the capricious ready to praise any virtues or to punish the vices.”^[40]  Taking the lead from Ripa, it is possible to draw out an implied extended metaphor of the biblical “refiner’s fire,” heated by the bellows and indicative of the salvation of humanity through suffering, raising up the virtuous and punishing the wicked.^[41]

6.3 The seventeenth-century reader would have been familiar with all of these sources, from Ovid to Ripa, and especially any religious metaphor they invoked, and would, more easily than we can, arrive at a meaning for this emblem, pointed in the right direction by the motto. A fascinating sketch depicting a bellows and a smoking fire and carrying the motto “Io del mio mal ministro fui” (“I was the maker of my own misfortune”) was scribbled by the artist Agostino Tassi during his trial in Rome in 1612 for the rape of Artemisia Gentileschi (Figure 5).^[42] Given the context, Tassi’s image perhaps invokes Ripa’s connection of the bellows to the punishment of vice and praise of virtue, or even hints at fear of damnation. In the sketch the key elements of the emblem—the bellows and the fire—are in mirror image in relation to the Frescobaldian emblem. Reversal of images frequently happens in the engraving or woodcutting process for making print blocks. Holding a mirror to the printed version indicates important congruences between the two images, in particular the angle of the two handles of the bellows; the diagonal slant and angle of the crossed sticks of wood; and the direction of the rising flames or smoke. The sketch lacks the upright fire irons that are shown in the print, perhaps because it was drawn while Tassi was in court, thus presumably from memory, unless it reflected an architectural feature of the room in which he gave evidence. If it were drawn from an actual image during the trial, it would point us to a Roman architectural source for the emblem. Perhaps more importantly though, it suggests that there might be a common visual source on which both Tassi and the creator of the Frescobaldian emblems were able to draw.

6.4 The Latin motto “Depressa elevor,” too, is open to ambiguity, conveying the idea, “having been weighed down, I am raised up,” with feminine grammatical forms that may indicate the rise and fall of the flames, or “having been weighed down, I am lessened.”^[43] The bellows once pressed down has exhausted its wind and therefore its power to activate anything (flame, organ pipes, etc.). It is in the process of depression that the force of air is created, which feeds the flames, causing them to rise. As for a personification of man, in a depressed state, weighed down, he is exhausted and has no further strength or inspiration. In being raised up, he regains the strength and inspiration he has lost. The meaning may be secular or sacred: the capricious moodiness of the lover or the rising up from the weight of sin offered by divine love. Since the context is a devotional song, it is likely that a sacred meaning is implied. However, if we accept the second reading of the motto, the loss of power or strength (the depression of the bellows) in the process of empowering something else (love, flames) could be read in political terms: losing one’s own power in the service of something or someone else. This could be a more personal statement of submission to a patron.

6.5 The text of the song that accompanies this emblem, Dove, dove, Signor by Francesco Della Valle, voices emotional upheaval in the first person (Appendix 2). The poet identifies God as the only place of refuge, but the process of finding that refuge may not necessarily be a comfortable one. The concetto expressed in the motto “Depressa elevor” is a common one with many parallel, though not identical, examples signifying the wish to rise up from the baser things of life to the contemplation of more spiritual matters, or the desire to see through the highs and lows of life.^[44] A motto with a similar sentiment though different words is used by Picinelli to represent the idea of rising up from sin, and the example he cites is a specific biblical reference to the parable of the prodigal son, who, brought down by sin, says “I will arise and go to my Father.”^[45]  The bellows is an image that conflates ideas relating to the capriciousness of life, with its highs and lows, with the religious metaphor of suffering and salvation. Open, it is a force that may inflame either positively or negatively; closed, it is powerless, but it does require an external agency to control it. The agency that is inferred (oneself, God, the devil, life, love) drives the reading of the emblem. Situated in this poetic context, the message of suffering and salvation seems to be the most appropriate, illustrating the lines,“therefore my soul, deluded by its own desires, wishes to break away from the gloomy prison that is my breast” (“onde da i suoi piacer l’alma delusa / romper desia l’atra prigion del petto”). The reader is encouraged to rise up or be inspired to return in penitence to the Lord, however difficult it may be to recognize fault or admit guilt. The musical setting of the text mirrors the “path” from guilt to salvation, from minor sonorities at the beginning to a major ending by way of tonally unstable chromatic movement, for example in the lines that juxtapose “friend” and “enemy” in connection with “delight” (“Ciò ch’amico mi diè vano diletto, / fatto hor nemico i miei delitti accusa”) and in the final cadence on the words “to you my God” (“a te, mio Dio”).

6.6 The emblem at the end of the “Canto spirituale in stile recitativo” Dopo si lungo error comprises two columns of mist on either side of a bush, with the sun in the center and the motto “Elevat et dissipat,” all contained in an oval frame decorated with scrolls (Figure 6).^[46] There are other, similar images with a Florentine provenance that, like the depiction of bellows, can be found with reference to alchemy and other esoteric studies. Though fascinating, they are unlikely sources for this emblem. Benardino de Sahagun’s “Universal history of the things of new Spain,” a sixteenth-century manuscript known more commonly as the Florentine Codex (I-Fl Palat. 218–20), contains a description of Aztec methods of hunting for precious stones and suggests that at dawn when the sun came up, the earth gave off vapor or smoke where the precious stones were located, thus indicating to the primitive geologist where to dig.^[47] The notion of some kind of secret sign indicating the location of hidden treasure is appealing and might suggest a signal to look beyond the superficial presentation of the book or song. However, it is doubtful that such a reading could aid in reaching a sustainable interpretation of the emblem in this context. The emblem is used in a later Florentine publication, the Historia contagiosi morbi qui Florentiam populatus fuit anno 1630, published in 1633, a book that documents the plague epidemic of 1630.^[48] In this context, the vapors might be interpreted in the Galenic sense of the evaporation of bad airs thought to spread disease.

6.7 Picinelli, a widely known and more reliable source, associates the verb dissipabit with the sun because of the power of the sun’s rays to burn away clouds.^[49] However, he also associates this combination of image and word with the presence of God and, perhaps pertinent here, with the presence of the head of the family. Picinelli further notes that, before Urban VIII became pope, when he left Pisa to return to Florence following his studies, he adopted the impresa of the sun rising in the East with the motto “Aliusque, et idem.”^[50] In addition, Picinelli quotes Seneca to indicate the sun as a symbol of virtue against which calumnies and imposture cannot survive.^[51]

6.8 The text of Dopo si lungo error is by Giovanni Della Casa and is a plea to God to forgive sins committed (Appendix 2). Here there is an unambiguous metaphor connecting the image and the poetic text. God (the sun) has the power to forgive (disperse) sin and restore (elevate) the sinner who has for so long committed sins. The text makes explicit reference to “the pity of your holy gaze” (“la pietà delle tue luci sante”), which seems to be a direct invitation to the reader or listener to contemplate the message of reconciliation and forgiveness of sins reinforced by the image. The positive message of forgiveness is underlined by major sonorities at crucial moments in the text. The opening melodic gesture ascends to a major third above the bass on the word “error” which seems to contradict its meaning, and in the line quoted above, the word “luci” is placed on a D-sharp above a B in the bass. The implied B major triad is comparatively rare in Frescobaldi’s output. The setting, though apparently in an A-natural tonal type, ranges widely into the sharp side of the hexachordal gamut, which might be seen as a way of musically representing the dispersing of mist or turning from the “many sins” outlined in the text.

6.9 In sum, the relationship of each poetic text to the emblem that follows it hints at an interpretation of the image that has some universal moral element. If we view that interpretation through the lens of historical context, other layers of meaning emerge.

7. Visual Imagery and Historical Context

7.1 Christopher Hibbert’s standard history of the Medici rather unfairly paints Ferdinando II de’ Medici, the dedicatee of this volume, as a less-than-dynamic leader, noting that “he was drawn into a brief war with the Pope’s tiresome Barberini relatives, but otherwise contrived to face every threat to Florence’s peace and security with mollifying complaisance.”^[52] The reputation of Medici rule after the death of Ferdinando I as weak, corrupt, and indecisive has been questioned by Niccolò Capponi, who has demonstrated that Ferdinando II was a clever diplomat, working to keep a sustained peace in Tuscany while mindful of the financial resources available.^[53] For all of his long rule, Ferdinando was able to maintain neutrality with both France and Spain, reducing the Tuscan naval fleet and increasing his land defenses, developing a strong militia that reduced his reliance on expensive mercenary forces. In 1630 the grand duchy of Florence was paralyzed by a plague epidemic. At this time Ferdinando had been forced to send financial and military aid to Milan under the terms of an old but still operational agreement with the Spanish. Under these conditions, Pope Urban VIII Barberini annexed the Duchy of Urbino in 1631. Ferdinando subsequently reasserted his claim to Urbino by marrying Vittoria della Rovere, the duchy’s heir, in 1637. Relations with the Papal state broke down completely with the attempted annexation of Castro in 1640, and war broke out. Ferdinando was on the winning side as part of an anti-papal coalition formed by Parma, Modena, Tuscany, and Venice.

7.2 To a Florentine reader in 1630 this collection of images would thus have been loaded with meaning. As noted above, the bee is the most important part of the Barberini family coat of arms and appears conspicuously on Barberini commissioned art, architecture, and publications. The young Ferdinando II de’ Medici had won the admiration of his subjects by staying in the city during the plague of 1630, while the annexation of Urbino had created the perception of a land-grabbing Papacy. The Virgilian concetto of pacifying bees would have been a highly resonant image, especially in light of the passage that immediately follows these lines, about putting to death the inferior “captain” to leave the palace free.

7.3 The motto attached to the bellows has strong echoes of one used by Ferdinando I de’ Medici in the church of Santa Maria in Domnica, also known as Santa Maria alla Navicella, in Rome. Ferdinando had the ceiling restored, and the great coffers are decorated with numerous symbolic images, including many in which that church’s symbol of a ship, the navicella, is prominent. The navicella is an image with a long history dating back to mosaics in the old St. Peter’s, and it also appears in the frescoes in the Spanish chapel of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. The image of a ship riding out the waves of a storm, rising and falling but remaining afloat, referred explicitly to the ship of the Church. In the corner of Santa Maria alla Navicella, above the entrance, there is a representation of a ship with the motto “Depressa extollitur” (Figure 7: ship). As used by Ferdinando I, the concept of something pushed down that will rise up expressed his determination to remain afloat despite the maelstrom of life.^[54] This reading would not have been out of place in the context of events around 1630 and in the life of the second Duke Ferdinando as he navigated a treacherous political environment. Coupling a very similar motto to the picture of the bellows found in the Frescobaldian emblem perhaps invokes the extended biblical metaphor of the refiner’s fire and suggests that we all ultimately get the reward we deserve, raising or condemning us regardless of outward appearances.

7.4 The concetto of the emblem of the rising sun is ambiguous in a historical context. Images of the sun were important in dynastic representations and were used not only by Urban VIII Barberini, as already noted above, but also by the Bourbons. Florence in 1630 was in a delicately balanced politically neutral stance between the French and the Spanish. In spite of periodic diplomatic or even military skirmishes, the Medici also needed to maintain a relationship with Rome as their status as grand dukes was bestowed by the Papacy. Given the possibility of the sun as representing a familial “padre” or “padrone,” the rising sun could also be read as a plea from a client to a patron (unnamed) for restoration and forgiveness. However, a very similar image is used in the ceiling commissioned by Ferdinando I for Santa Maria in Domnica (Figure 7: sun), appearing alongside the images of the navicella. The bellows representing the praise of virtue and punishment of vice, with its associated motto suggesting rising up above vice, is directly connected to the forgiveness of sin represented by the sun and clouds. The two images are complementary: in the ceiling they are in close proximity, and in the book, they complement each other as well as fitting the texts of the two spiritual songs set by Frescobaldi. The presence in a Roman location of images commissioned by a Florentine patron parallels the duality of allegiance reflected in this publication.

7.5 The duality of the imagery is further complicated by the decorative initial letters. Landini used at least two sets of initial letters for the song texts. One set is unremarkable, the letters being embellished by abstract floral patterns and pastoral figures. The outlines lack sharpness and in one case the letter appears damaged, though it seems possible that this letter C (p. 46) is from a different font as what can be seen of the decoration rests on an architectural rather than a floral framework. The other set of initial letters is decorated with cityscapes (Figure 8: pp. 22, 32, 36, 42), and these are of greater interest. There are only five letters with the latter sort of decoration—A, C, D, E, and S—and they are not used for every occurrence of these initial letters. The inconsistency may be down to the practicalities of printing if, for example, more than one decorated initial letter D was needed at the same time. But it does raise the question as to whether there is some significance in where they are placed or even if the letters are significant in themselves.

7.6 Landini used these cityscape letters in at least one other book, one specifically about Florence as a city (albeit in an earlier era).^[55] The views may well be generic, but comparisons with contemporary views of the city and with Tuscan architectural styles (with allowance for the small size of the images and limitations of the technology) indeed suggest an attempt at a more specific rendition of Tuscany, if not the city of Florence itself. The outline of surrounding hills behind a dome and tower embellishing the letter E (p. 42), while somewhat abstracted and reversed in the process of creating a block for printing, is suggestive of the Florentine landscape and dome and tower of the Duomo and Signoria. The loggia depicted behind the letter S (p. 36) is typical of Florentine architecture, such as that of the Mercato Nuovo, the Signoria, or the Ospedale of Santa Maria Nuova. The letter C (p. 32) includes what might be a row of houses along the city wall, a piazza, and buildings with domes that could conceivably be those of the Duomo and Baptistery.

7.7 A comparison of these images with sixteenth-century perspective views of the city supports the argument that they were intended to be specific views of Florence. They seem consistent with contemporary chorographies (the contemporaneous term for a map or visual plan of a geographical area), which use oblique elevated views to depict important landmarks, but at such an angle that street plans are often obscured.^[56] Early Renaissance chorographies, those of the fifteenth century, were probably made with the intention of showing the strength of a city’s fortifications rather than as a tool for tourists. The first chorography of Florence of a manageable size that might have been used by tourists was published by Claudio Duchetto around 1580. The first chorography to use a plan showing both elevated views of buildings and a clear layout of streets was made by Stefano Bonsignori, court cosmographer to Francesco I and Ferdinando I. It was published in 1584 and functioned in part as an encomium to Florence itself.^[57] Collectively the little images contained in the initial letters in Frescobaldi’s book may likewise suggest some sort of homage to the city, if not directly then perhaps by triggering memory or association with a known chorography such as that of Bonsignori.

7.8 In summarizing the visual material presented thus far, there are three points to consider: (1) imagery that pays homage to the city of Florence or to Tuscany more generally; (2) a theme of reconciliation, expressed by metaphors of pacification, repentance, and forgiveness, that connects the moral meanings of the emblems; and (3) a relationship between the emblems and the poetic texts to which they are affiliated. These are not without ambiguity as the references to Florence and Rome suggest at least two different sources if not allegiances. This duality does, however, seem to parallel the Roman and Florentine elements of the musical style noted above. The final emblem to be considered introduces the potential for further layers of meaning.

8. The Banchieri Question

8.1 The first emblem in Frescobaldi’s Primo libro (Figure 9), printed at the end of the first aria, Signor, c’hora fra gli ostri, is the only one in the collection that has been discussed in scholarly literature. The image of seven pipes surmounted by a musical staff with the motto “Discordia concors” is the only one to include what appears to be an academic pseudonym, Il Dissonante (suggesting that it is an individual’s impresa), and is also the only one to appear twice, the second time towards the end of the volume, accompanying the “Canzona a due canti e tenore” (recte due voci, canto e tenore) Eri già tutta mia. Some years ago Frederick Hammond and Remo Giazotto each suggested that this apparent impresa might indicate Frescobaldi’s membership in a Florentine or Roman academy.^[58] In pursuing this line of reasoning, Elda Salerni Buracchio argued that it signifies Frescobaldi’s membership in the obscure Roman Accademia degli Ineguali, the only academy from the period that used a similar impresa.^[59] Buracchio noted that the emblem also appears in printed works by Adriano Banchieri (about which more below) and (as we have already observed) in Domenico Anglesi’s Primo libro d’arie musicali of 1635, also printed by Landini; she inferred that Anglesi knew both Frescobaldi and Banchieri.^[60] What Buracchio does not mention is that two of the other emblems in Frescobaldi’s book also appear in Anglesi’s volume, which argues against interpreting the images in Frescobaldi’s Arie as a collection of academic imprese.^[61] In short, while “Discordia concors” may have an academic connection, if the emblems in the Arie are to be viewed as a collection, the resolution of their meanings probably does not lie in academic circles.

8.2 There is no question that this image is personal to Banchieri (and that he himself was Il Dissonante) as it is identical to one that appears in three of his works: on the title pages of his Dialoghi concerti sinfonie e canzoni and Il virtuoso ritrovo academico del Dissonante, and in the Lettere armoniche.^[62] Banchieri had founded the Accademia dei Floridi in Bologna in 1614.^[63] Its activities were suspended around 1623–24, and the academy subsequently re-formed, in 1625, as the Accademia dei Filomusi. All three of these publications date from the period of the Filomusi. In the Lettere armoniche Banchieri published a discourse that he had presented to the Accademia dei Filomusi on the topic of the sampogna (the zampogna, or musical pipes). There he situates the sampogna in classical myth and Biblical narrative—the pipes of Jubal placed on a keyboard become the organ of the Roman church—and follows this argument with a mini discourse on the concord of perfect intervals.^[64] The impresa appears under the heading “Compendio sulla sampogna armonica” and is sandwiched between a madrigal “to Syrinx” (à Siringa) by Cesare Rinaldi and the text of the discourse itself (Figure 10). According to the Lettere (p. 130: see Fig. 10), the impresa was invented on the madrigal text: “madrigal … on which the academy member Il Dissonante produced the sampogna impresa erected in the virtuous academic meeting place of the Filomusi.”

8.3 Adrien Alix suggests that contrary to Banchieri’s claim, the impresa was at least in part devised by the poet Giovanni Battista Marino. He identifies the source as Marino’s series of idyllic and pastoral poems, La sampogna, published in Paris in 1620, five years before Banchieri’s presentation of his discourse to the Accademia dei Filomusi.^[65] Furthermore, Marino published a mystical-religious interpretation of the Pan myth in his Dicerie sacre (1614). In Marino’s poems, the syrinx or sampogna is set not just in its mythological context but in the context of cosmic harmony. In the first instance, Pan falls in love with Syrinx, but her metamorphosis into reeds allows her to escape his advances. His love can only be consummated by blowing into the pipes to create music. Pan’s disordered passion is thus transformed into harmony. In the Dicerie sacre Pan is viewed as a Christ figure. The reeds represent the frailties and weaknesses of humankind over which Christ breathes to lament man’s ingratitude, and his breath represents his love for humanity. The seven notes of the pipe represent the seven last words of Christ on the cross.^[66] The overarching theme of both is that love has the power to transcend all discord.

8.4 There is a direct connection with Bologna—the city where Banchieri lived and worked—in Marino’s La sampogna as two letters addressed to Bolognese literati Claudio Achillini and Girolamo Preti follow immediately after the dedication, and one may fairly safely assume that it was read in Bologna very soon after publication. However, Banchieri’s relationship with Marino goes back even further as he published a laudatory poem ostensibly by Marino in 1613, of which a version also appears in the Conclusioni nel’organo suonarino (1609).^[67] Frescobaldi was acquainted with Marino’s poetry, having already set a handful of his texts in his madrigal book of 1608 as well as setting further texts in his Arie, where they appear alongside poetry by Preti.^[68]

8.5 The musical canon represented in the emblem (the higher part on the musical staff in the frame and the lower part on the staff decorating the band across the pipes: Figure 11) also antedates the image. It is included in the canons attached to the edition of Banchieri’s Cartella musicale published in 1613,^[69] and subsequently resolved in Romano Micheli’s Musica vaga et artificiosa (1615).^[70] Micheli identifies Banchieri as the composer of the canon and provides both Banchieri’s cryptic instruction for its realization and a solution to it (Figure 12). There are small differences in the upper part in Micheli’s version. In all other respects, this miniature double canon is identical to the canon embedded in the emblem.

8.6 Banchieri’s instructions for the resolution of the canon, rendered in poetic form, chime with the meanings that can be drawn from Marino’s texts—in particular the notion of friends and enemies being united and the appearance of things apparently in opposition to each other coming together in harmony:

O che gratioso tir da racontare
amici & inimici sono uniti,
acuto & sopr’acuto ogn’un appare
tutti contrari, & fanno in suono uniti
gl’orecchi altrui; ond’io per dichiarare
a gli cantori acciò sieno avertiti
ut re mi fa sol la, cantan costoro
fa mi re ut, la sol fa mi con loro.^[71]

(Oh what a pleasing trick to tell!
Friends and enemies are united,
acute and sopracute each appears
all contrarily, and they make a united sound
to the ears of others. Therefore to explain
to the singers, so that they will be advised:
the ones sing ut re mi fa sol la,
the others [sing] fa mi re ut, la sol fa mi.)^[72]

These ideas prefigure the motto in the emblem, “Discordia concors”: “Concord out of discord.” They are also germane to Frescobaldi’s Arie, as will be seen below. Micheli published several collections containing “artificioso” compositions in which overtly complex contrapuntal challenges are presented. He certainly knew Frescobaldi, for he addressed a dedication to him,^[73] which would suggest some sort of relationship, even if only one of professional respect.

8.7 The question of the ownership of this impresa is further complicated by its inclusion in a portrait of Frescobaldi. This anonymous painting is typical of the period and shows the sitter’s head and upper body. The emblem is drawn on a piece of paper in the composer’s left hand. An image of Frescobaldi holding this impresa suggests that it was in some way personal to him (despite the presence of Banchieri’s pseudonym, Il Dissonante). The whole point of an impresa was that it was individual and unique, and for two people to use the same image undermines the basis of identification by means of an emblematic image. Although the portrait is now in a different private collection, its provenance indicates a direct line back to the private collection of Antonio Goretti.^[74] Goretti was a dilettante musician and patron, and a friend of the Frescobaldi family in Girolamo’s youth. It was in his home in Ferrara in 1598 that an audience including Giovanni Maria Artusi heard performances of modern madrigals by Claudio Monteverdi and others, thus sparking the Artusi-Monteverdi controversy.^[75] It is possible that Frescobaldi was present at that performance.

8.8 Given the multivalency of the “Discordia concors” emblem, understanding its use in the context of Frescobaldi’s Arie is challenging. The fact that this emblem is positioned early in the volume, accompanying the opening aria, Signor, c’hora fra gli ostri, suggests that it has significance for the whole volume. The dedicatory letter that precedes the first aria is addressed to Ferdinando II de’ Medici, and he is also named in the second aria in the book, Degnati o gran Fernando; the first aria too is an explicitly dedicatory text, the unnamed “Signor” being Ferdinando (see Appendix 2). He is described in relation to Pallas and Mars, gloriously disarming death, and as the object of songs of praise and glory. The prefatory dedication and Degnati o gran Fernando both refer in some way to celestial harmony—a topos familiar in Medici symbolism, which indeed resonates with the concetto of the image.

8.9 Banchieri’s letter to Frescobaldi published in 1628 in the Lettere armoniche, makes reference to perfect harmony and consonance and has echoes of his academic discourse.^[76] Might this song contain a response to Banchieri hidden in the encomiastic text, or might the emblem covertly address the volume as a whole to Banchieri?

8.10 The second appearance of this emblem in Frescobaldi’s Arie follows the setting of Eri già tutta mia, a text also set by Monteverdi.^[77] In Frescobaldi’s setting, the imagery of the poetic text lamenting the departed lover (see Appendix 2) is unexpectedly given a rhythmically strong refrain in which words are extracted and repeated (“Eri già tutta mia, or non sei più; non più, non più”) and a lilting triple time setting.^[78] While the placement of the “Discordia concors” emblem at the end of this duet, near the end of the volume, may just be a symmetrical bookend to its first appearance after the first aria, it would make more sense if the musical setting related to it in some way. The pitch pattern in the tenor part at the start bears a passing resemblance to the upper part of the resolution of the canon (assuming that there is only one resolution), and although there are repeated stepwise descending patterns throughout the aria, the ascending stepwise scale that forms the lower part of the canon is entirely missing. On the face of it there doesn’t appear to be a connection, but that does not necessarily mean that there isn’t one. Frescobaldi was after all a master of the hexachordal inganno in which the polyphonic behavior of notes could be transformed by changing their associated hexachordal syllables.^[79]

8.11 Whatever the “Discordia concors” impresa may have meant to Frescobaldi, Banchieri, or others, Landini presumably printed the Arie volumes as a commercial enterprise, and though undoubtedly a high-end product, the book must have had some appeal to purchasers lacking any attachment to an academy or knowledge of personal imprese. Following this line of reasoning, I would suggest that the “Discordia concors” emblem carried layers of meaning, at least one of which was understandable to a wider readership. If we therefore set aside readings of the “Discordia concors” emblem as a personal impresa, the meaning of which is fixed in relation to an individual, and interpret it instead as an emblem that is repeatable in a variety of contexts, another more plausible meaning emerges. Just as erotic love emblems are recast as moral emblems of the divine by framing them with a different verbal content, so the song texts recast the “Discordia concors” emblem.

8.12 The notion of the world as a knot in which all the diverse parts are joined in a discordant concord is a concept deeply rooted in classical literature and philosophy and is found in the work of Ovid, Horace, Plato, and others. It recurs closer to the period in question in Tasso’s discourse on heroic poetry.^[80] In Banchieri’s explanation of the motto in his impresa, the disparate elements of pipe and keyboard are united in the perfect instrument; the Dionysian and Apollonian are reconciled; the canon is resolved. The Neoplatonic invocation of cosmic harmony seems apt in this context. The motto “Discordia concors” as a metaphor for resolving discord between warring factions and making peace, or at least encouraging those who are fundamentally in disagreement to live together peaceably, has some political traction in the Florentine context and at the same time echoes the theme of cosmic harmony used to glorify Ferdinando I de’ Medici in the 1589 intermedi for Girolamo Bargagli’s La pellegrina. In the context of the volume as a whole, the “Discordia concors” emblem in its first appearance functions as an announcement of a theme of resolution of discord, pacification, and reconciliation that is metaphorically present in various forms in the other emblems: the bees are pacified by dust, the bellows invokes salvation or spiritual reconciliation, the mist evaporated by the sun is a metaphor for forgiveness, and finally, love remains in spite of abandonment.

9. Frescobaldi’s Arie and Their Intellectual Agency

9.1 The Medici were no strangers to the power of emblems, and cosmic harmony was a theme embedded in the Medici decorative programs from the time of Cosimo I. The decorations in the Palazzo della Signoria (Palazzo Vecchio) commissioned by Cosimo I used emblematic symbols to reinforce the legitimacy of Medici rule. By 1630 the theme would have invoked past glories of the grand duchy. Following the family move to the Palazzo Pitti, Ferdinando II commissioned a remarkably similar decorative program from Pietro da Cortona, executed between 1637 and 1661. The Cortona frescoes in the Stanze dei Pianeti (the Planetary Rooms) include images of peace-making—for example, Vulcan refusing to forge weapons and Mercury promising an age of peace.^[81]

9.2 In the mid to late sixteenth century, the publication of emblem books increased significantly following the appearance of Andrea Alciato’s Emblematum liber. Alongside Alciato, books by Giovio, Ruscelli, Domenichi, and Ripa provided additional material for aspiring courtiers and academies to use in fashioning their identities.^[82] Galileo provides a good example of how a man who aspired to a courtly role tapped into the self-conscious use of emblems in positioning himself as court philosopher and mathematician. He even designed an emblem for a medal to commemorate the marriage of Cosimo II to Maria Maddalena of Austria in 1608, describing it in detail in a letter to the grand duchess Cristina. Comprising a globe-shaped lodestone with little pieces of iron around it and the motto “Vim facit amor” (love produces strength), the design drew on the existing emblematic tradition of the ball-shaped globe representing the Medici palle (the spherical globes on the Medici coat of arms) and the idea of the lodestone drawing all subjects to it with love.^[83] This medal was never struck, but another, celebrating Cosimo II as the new Jupiter surrounded by the “Medicean stars,” was made. Ferdinando II’s mother and grandmother, the archduchess Maria Maddalena and Cristina of Lorraine, also drew on emblems to construct their identity and to reinforce their authority to rule when they became regents after the death of Cosimo II, when Ferdinando, as the legitimate heir, was only 11 years old. Maria Maddalena in particular drew on the symbolism and mythology of female rulers for court entertainments and art that she commissioned prior to July 1628, when Ferdinando began to rule in his own right. Heroines such as Judith, St. Ursula, and St. Agatha appear in operas, while historical female sovereigns were the subjects of frescoes in the newly acquired Villa Poggio Imperiale. Kelley Harness sees the narrative of Marco da Gagliano’s La Flora, presented in 1628, and especially the role of Venus, as significant in depicting the surrender of power of mother to son, ensuring continuity of peace and prosperity.^[84]

9.3 Frescobaldi’s book is a comfortable match to a patron with a family history of exploiting emblematic imagery. In the context of seventeenth-century material culture, books were items of value and libraries a marker of status. Furthermore, thanks to the fashion for collecting, books that illustrated and made available other people’s collections of curiosities, statues, art, coins, and so on, became increasingly popular.^[85] A book that combined elements of the emblem book (a popular genre for libraries) and the songbook is likely to have had a particular courtly appeal and high value in a gift economy. The courtly message Frescobaldi’s book portrays of resolving discord and maintaining peace, preferring diplomacy and reconciliation to war, would be appropriate to the course of leadership that Ferdinando would subsequently take. It was only several years after this publication that Ferdinando and his allies defeated the papal forces in the War of Castro, and his diplomatic skills in maintaining neutrality between France and Spain emerged. The theme of reconciliation could be read as a signal of his intent. However, this is not the only possible narrative, and of course the Medici were not the only family to exploit emblems to their advantage. This collection of emblems might be understood differently by another patron or audience and in a geographical location other than Florence, such as, for example, in Rome, where the references to the Barberini bees and rising sun motifs could be seen as constructing an image that reinforced the legitimacy and power of Urban VIII and his family.

9.4 For Giovanni Battista Landini, a successful homage to the Medici and to the city of Florence might have improved his status as a printer and therefore his business during tough economic times. It does seem unlikely, though, that he would have come up with a complex literary and artistic program himself, though he certainly had the specialist skills to see the work through the printing process. It also seems unlikely that he would have undertaken a costly publication unless he could see a significant return on the expense of producing it.

9.5 Could Frescobaldi, who was primarily an instrumentalist and whose literary abilities were scorned by Giovanni Battista Doni, have come up with such an idea?^[86] Although the dedicatee is not named on the title page (Figure 1), Frescobaldi is identified as “organista del serenissimo gran duca di Toscana” with the words “GRAN DUCA” equal in size to “ARIE MUSICALI.” Together with the Medici coat of arms, even without reference to the subsequent dedication page, this verbiage leaves no doubt as to the allegiance of the composer and the printer, whose name also appears on the title page. It seems unlikely that the composer himself could have devised the program. Hammond has suggested that Frescobaldi’s son Domenico may have been the author of at least two of the texts in the book, including the dedicatory sonnet.^[87] Domenico potentially had the literary education to have been capable of devising the program, and one known volume of his Latin poetry survives. The simultaneous references to the Medici and Florence and to the Barberini do fit with the composer’s circles of patronage at the time. The Barberini were of course Frescobaldi’s major patrons following his return to Rome.

9.6 I would suggest though, that within Frescobaldi’s Roman circle there was a more compelling candidate for the role of intellectual agent who could have devised the emblematic and literary program—a candidate who had the skills and patronal contacts, and who is known to have been an associate of Frescobaldi—the poet, art connoisseur, and courtly virtuoso Lelio Guidiccioni. Arnaldo Morelli has proved convincingly that Frescobaldi was on collegial, if not friendly, terms with Guidiccioni.^[88] Guidiccioni was in the right places at the right time. He wrote the Latin dedication of Frescobaldi’s Liber secundum sacrarum modulationum, published in 1627. He had been the papal envoy to Florence at the time of Ferdinando’s birth, and it was he who conducted Ferdinando on a tour of the Borghese art collection during the latter’s visit to Rome in 1628, a visit during which Ferdinando probably heard Frescobaldi play and during which Frescobaldi’s move to Florence was probably instigated, as the composer left Rome after 22 November 1628.

9.7 In his little known discourse “Della musica,” preserved in manuscript, Guidiccioni presents a series of metaphors about musica humana, shot through with the opposition of concord and discord: “The upper world and the heavens are governed by and turn with harmony; the lower world is a concordant discord, a mixture of elements; the lives of animate bodies are a concord of humors; man as a small world is a dissonant consonance composed perfectly of soul and body, of intellect, sense, reason and appetite.”^[89] The echo of the motto “Discordia concors” is obvious as are the classical sources. Adding weight to the case for Guidiccioni as the inventor of the emblematic program are his manuscript lectures and documents, and in particular his discourse on eloquence. While apparently written in an archaic, even arcane style, the underlying message regarding the power of music to subdue warring factions and exert harmony and peace is clear. The image of the noise of war obscuring eloquence, and of music restoring it, finds parallels in the emblematic program of the arie:

But for the other part, if in the bombast of martial noise eloquence is no longer or not always heard, there where Bellona exults with Discord and with bloody flogging rages, the wisdom of Pallas can no longer be recognized and has no place, nor does her oil flow, where  lakes of human blood stagnate. Music must be preferred, which holds dominion over warriors, over infuriated Saul, over Alexander, dominator of the world; an ostia which transplants woods, tames tigers, draws the herds of the sea, obtains life from the bosom of death; that raises up and does not subjugate; and although the song of the muses can enchant, there where sounds the whistle of the tempests of Mars, vanishes altogether Apollo’s melody which requires calm.… [indecipherable insertion ending with a Latin phrase] I can, without leaving out harmony, speak of the order that makes the world like a musician, measuring and weighing everything; giving to everything proportion, rule, consonance and order by its numbers.^[90]

9.8 Guidiccioni’s other writings are full of references to Virgil, whose works he translated, and to other classical sources. He was certainly familiar with the Georgics.^[91] The devotional aspect of music in the service of God emerges in some of Guidiccioni’s other writings, in particular a discourse on the moon that evolves into an extended metaphor of Marian worship in which man becomes a new David singing praises with the seraphim.^[92]

9.9 Guidiccioni was probably influenced by his friend Giulio Mancini, the physician who was employed as a doctor at the Ospedale di Santo Spirito in Sassia before becoming papal physician to Urban VIII. Mancini wrote a number of manuscript treatises including two on the uses of painting as a means of maintaining health.^[93] For Mancini, beholding paintings not only exercised the eye, but also impressed on the mind correct images, whether for the pregnant woman who should impress on her maternal imagination images of healthy sons, or for the man who should view heroic deeds of the past as models for his civic and civil behavior or landscapes to refresh and restore his cheerfulness. Frescobaldi, too, is likely to have known Mancini as his period of employment at the Ospedale di Santo Spirito coincided with Mancini’s. Mancini also wrote briefly about music.^[94] In his view, a volume such as the Arie musicali that places moral images alongside texts that could be read or listened to in song would be physically and morally beneficial to the health of the reader.

9.10 If Guidiccioni was the intellectual agent behind the volume, that would support an argument that the contents of this book were devised and created prior to, and probably in preparation for, Frescobaldi’s departure for Florence at the end of 1628.^[95] Guidiccioni moved in the intersecting circles of Florentine Medici patronage and Roman Barberini patronage. His involvement would explain the mixture of Roman and Florentine influences in the music and the apparently divided loyalties implied by the visual material that seems to assert Frescobaldi’s allegiance to his new employer while simultaneously referring to the old.

9.11 What it does not explain is the reappearance of the emblems in a different context in Anglesi’s Primo libro d’arie musicali. While the music itself is of high quality and is indicative that Anglesi was a skilled composer, there are physical characteristics in Anglesi’s volume that betray carelessness and lack of attention to detail on the part of the printer. While Frescobaldi’s book is not without mistakes, in Anglesi’s several of the initial letters are clearly damaged, with the center of the block missing; there is an upside down initial letter; and the empty spaces on pages are filled with an apparently random selection of decorative blocks, some of them quite large. The emblems seem to be used only as filler and seem to have no connection to the texts. I would propose, therefore, that Anglesi’s volume is an imitation of Frescobaldi’s, possibly paid for by subscription, judging from the number of songs that have titles containing what appear to be family names, such as “Aria detta la Montalva” and “Aria detta la Saracinella.” It was also to be the final publication of Landini’s tiny musical output.

10. Conclusions: Function, Use, and Reception

10.1 The interpretation of the emblems presented here is hypothetical. It is plausible but not provable, and there remain unanswered questions about the visual material in Frescobaldi’s publication. The casting of type and the creation of woodblocks for printing images was not a cheap process. The reuse of blocks was common, and both type and blocks were passed from one print shop to another. Landini had acquired his music font from Pietro Cecconcelli, who had issued a handful of music prints in the 1620s,^[96] but he himself issued only four music books, which would suggest that these were in some way special cases. Landini’s source for the blocks for printing images remains unknown; it seems unlikely that he would have gone to the expense of having blocks made for these images and then used them only twice in music books, probably with small print runs. However, I have been unable to trace earlier use (apart from “Discordia concors”) or further reuse beyond Anglesi’s Arie of his Frescobaldi emblems.^[97] This may suggest that these images were paid for by a wealthy third party and that economy was not an issue. Landini did, after all, create bespoke diagrams for Galileo. It is likely that Landini acquired the “Discordia concors” image from a different source than the others as it certainly pre-existed and is of better quality. The association with Banchieri suggests that it was provided by one of the print shops that Banchieri had used for his publications, presumably one of the Bolognese printers, not the Venetian ones who had first introduced the emblem. (If more than one version of the image existed, one would expect to find evidence for that in printed exemplars.) All in all, from the lack of evidence to the contrary, I conclude that the Frescobaldi emblems, apart from “Discordia concors,” were bespoke productions.

10.2 Up to this point, I have used the term “reader” when discussing Frescobaldi’s book, though of course it is primarily a book of songs. The poetic texts and images can be enjoyed by the reader paging through the volume, and pondering the moral messages delivered by the word-image partnership. The visual imagery supports that of the text and provides the reader with a richer experience, particularly in the case of the devotional texts; reading and looking simultaneously may be used as a means of reaching greater spiritual awareness. This interpretation chimes with Mancini’s ideas of beholding images to impress healthy images in the mind. It implies, though, a silent reader, as the images cannot be conveyed by reading aloud. Neither would a performer have had any way of communicating an image to an audience, even if the audience members had a reason to look at and study the emblems.

10.3 The concept of a silent reader is problematic. Since at least the work of Marshal McLuhan, the impact of the invention of the printing press and the apparent shift from an oral/aural culture to one in which the written and visual are primary has been debated.^[98]  Scholars are largely in agreement that reading in the early modern period was primarily audible, whether in the context of reading aloud to family or a social gathering, or in the context of education, and many early modern texts provide evidence that the author’s expectation was that the written words would be heard, not seen.^[99] The presence of a picture suggests the primacy of the eye over the ear, which in the context of a music book sets up a paradox.

10.4 The inclusion of visual elements separates the music as a written object from the experience of the music as performed. To invoke Carolyn Abbate, the affective drastic element of the experience of performance is eliminated as the reader contemplates the gnostic meaning of text and image.^[100] The visual nature of the book suggests that it was not intended primarily for the recreation of sound in future performance, as the performer cannot convey the image, though it could be argued that if the book were to be used to recreate a performance, the images might give clues as to the performed interpretation of the songs.

10.5 Andrew Dell’Antonio’s argument that proper listening by cultivated virtuosi was valued as a spiritual practice is germane here.^[101] He contends that discourse about music rather than participation in music performance marked the courtly appreciation of music in the early seventeenth century. The learned discussion of emblems and their meanings was likewise a pastime of the man of virtù as emblems required interpretation. As Tesauro puts it, “Wit loses its insight when a saying is too clear.… This causes the double pleasure of one who forms a witty concept and another who hears it. For the first enjoys giving life in another’s intellect to a noble product of his own, and the second enjoys grasping by his own ingenuity what the ingenuity of another furtively hides, since interpreting a witty and ingenious emblem requires no less wisdom than composing it.”^[102] With Frescobaldi’s publication, sound adds a new dimension, but I would suggest that it is remembered sound rather than live performance. The act of reading the text and pondering the associated images would have prompted memory of the sound of song in performance, perhaps of a specific occasion or even performer. The book is the means by which is enabled the mental recreation of sound in private or in a social setting. Furthermore, the array of emblems would have facilitated the courtly polymath’s engagement in discussion of a range of topics, from natural philosophy to alchemy, within a discourse community of likeminded virtuosi. The pansemiotic world view that gave rise to the fashion for emblems is the same world view that created the cabinet of curiosities or Wunderkammer.^[103] Frescobaldi’s book is a substitute Wunderkammer comprising visual and textual elements to be admired and commented on.

10.6 Frescobaldi’s Arie musicali, then, perhaps reflect a courtly listening practice. Frescobaldi and his collaborators, whoever they might have been, created a volume for Ferdinando II de’ Medici that encouraged a listening practice already favored in Roman circles. The images helped the young prince to focus his listening in the right way, away from sensuous enjoyment to contemplation of higher things. It was also therefore a means of keeping melancholy at bay, channeling courtly diversion in discourse alongside healthful viewing of moral images. Ultimately, whoever the prime mover in creating it was, the result is a multimedia package for a courtly environment—to read, to listen to, and to ponder.

Acknowledgments

A number of people have contributed to this article by commenting on drafts, helping with translations, and engaging in fruitful discussion on the topic. I would especially like to thank David Appleton, Tim Carter, Francesca Chiarelli-Morgan, Peg Katritzky, Jason Stoessel, and the anonymous JSCM reviewers who gave generous advice for improving my initial submission. Any remaining errors are my own.

Appendices

Appendix 1. Contents of Frescobaldi’s Primo libro d’arie musicali, with decorative elements

Appendix 2. Texts and translations of the arie associated with emblems

Figures

Figure 1. Frescobaldi, Primo libro d’arie musicali, title page

Figure 2. Anglesi, Libro primo d’arie musicali, p. 55

Figure 3. “Pulveris iactu q[ui]escent.” Frescobaldi, p. 10.

Figure 4. “Depressa elevor.” Frescobaldi, p. 12.

Figure 5. Agostino Tassi, sketch from trial records

Figure 6. “Elevat et dissipat.” Frescobaldi, p. 14.

Figure 7. Rome, Santa Maria alla Navicella, ceiling coffers: ship and sun

Figure 8. Initial letters with cityscapes. Frescobaldi, details of pp. 22, 32, 36, 42.

Figure 9. “Discordia concors.” Frescobaldi, p. 5.

Figure 10. Banchieri, Lettere armoniche, pp. 130–31

Figure 11. Banchieri’s musical canon (detail of Fig. 10)

Figure 12. Micheli, Musica vaga et artificiosa, p. 22