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References

^[*] Sara Pecknold (pecknolds@cua.edu) holds a PhD in Musicology with a minor in Vocal Performance from The Catholic University of America, where she currently serves as a lecturer in the History of Sacred Music and the founding director of the Catholic University Sacred Music Consort. Dr. Pecknold has presented at numerous conferences and institutions, including the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music, the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society, Seton Hall University’s Monsignor Cafone Lecture, Princeton University’s “Strozzi ’400,” and BBC Three’s “Composer of the Week” series on the life and music of Barbara Strozzi. Her articles have appeared in the Yale Journal of Music and Religion and New Blackfriars.

^[1] Barbara Strozzi, Sacri musicali affetti, libro primo, op. 5 (Venice: Gardano, 1655; reprint with introduction by Ellen Rosand, New York: Da Capo, 1988; reprint, Stuttgart: Cornetto-Verlag, 1998): “Perche tù ò mio Cuore, … t’incamini si timido à quella, à cui queste carte già consacrasti? T’intendo si; perche essendo tù in me stessa, non puoi haver sensi à mè nascosi: Fosti altre volte invitato, e quella mano, che ti fù porta al camino, t’assicurò l’ascesa: mà nè men cauto sei di presente, se ben tù miri, che non vacilla quel piede, che per saldi fondamenti si và conducendo.… Mà quai rimproveri dà te sento? non è (tu mi dici) dà ponderar le ragioni, ove una retta via apre libero il sentiero alla virtù.… e già che tanto non m’arestan le debolezze di Donna, che più non m’inoltri il compatimento del Sesto, sopra lievissimi fogli volo devota ad’inchinarmi.” Translation of final sentence is Rosand’s (introduction, n.p.). In this article, all translations from Italian are by Sara Pecknold, Francesco Cotticelli, Anthony DelDonna, and Ellen Rosand, with assistance from members of the JSCM editorial team.

^[2] Barbara Strozzi and her music were made known to modern musicologists by Ellen Rosand’s research; see her groundbreaking article, “Barbara Strozzi, virtuosissima cantatrice: The Composer’s Voice,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 31, no. 2 (1978): 241–81. Rosand provides a list of Strozzi’s published works (p. 260 n73), comprising eight opuses and a few selections in anthologies; op. 4 is lost. All of her volumes are secular, except the Sacri musicali affetti; her motet Quis dabit mihi was published in a sacred anthology, Sacra corona, motetti a due, e tre voci di diversi eccelentissimi autori moderni, comp. Bartolomeo Marcesso (Venice: Magni, 1656; reprint, Stuttgart: Cornetto-Verlag, 2013).

^[3] For instance, the three-voice madrigal Le tre grazie a Venere, cited and discussed below.

^[4] David and Ellen Rosand, “ ‘Barbara di Santa Sofia’ and ‘Il Prete Genovese’: On the Identity of a Portrait by Bernardo Strozzi,” The Art Bulletin 63, no. 2 (1981): 249–58.

^[5] Robert L. Kendrick, “Intent and Intertextuality in Barbara Strozzi’s Sacred Music,” Recercare 14 (2002): 65–98, here 66–68. In fact, the Rosands acknowledged the possible iconographical resonances of Strozzi’s portrait with depictions of caritas; “Barbara di Santa Sofia,” 250 n4.

^[6] Kendrick also cites an assertion, discovered by Beth L. Glixon, that Giovanni Paolo Vidman raped Strozzi: an appalling statement, to be sure. Glixon, “More on the Life and Death of Barbara Strozzi,” The Musical Quarterly 83, no. 1 (1999): 141, and Kendrick, “Intent and Intertextuality,” 65; Glixon cites I-Fas Carte Strozziane, ser. 3, cod. 208, fol. 36. I have argued elsewhere that the reference to rape may be a convention used to describe the process by which a young, virginal girl became a man’s concubine or “natural wife”; see Alexander Cowan, Marriage, Manner and Mobility (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 117–34. On courtesans, prostitutes, and sexual commerce in early modern Venice, see Deanna Shemek, “Courtesans and Prostitution, Italy (Cortigiana, cortegiane),” in the Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France and England (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2007), 101–2; Tessa Storey, “Courtesan Culture: Manhood, Honour, and Sociability,” in Erotic Cultures of Renaissance Italy, ed. Sara F. Matthews-Grieco (Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 248; and Margaret F. Rosenthal, The Honest Courtesan: Veronica Franco, Citizen and Writer in Sixteenth-Century Venice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

^[7] On the entry of Strozzi’s daughters into the convent of San Sepolcro, see Glixon, “More on the Life,” 137–38.

^[8] Art historian Margaret Morse has illustrated the importance of devotional art and other religious objects as tools for domestic catechesis, in “Creating Sacred Space: The Religious Visual Art Culture of the Renaissance Venetian Casa,” Renaissance Studies 21, no. 2 (2006): 151–84. Andrew Dell’Antonio has more recently explained the importance of listening in early modern spiritual formation, in Listening as Spiritual Practice in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011).

^[9] Loredano was also an active member of Giulio Strozzi’s Accademia degli Unisoni; his presence and his speech are recorded in the Veglia prima de’ Signori Academici Unisoni havuta in Venetia in casa del Giulio Strozzi (Venice: Sarzina, 1638); see especially 56 and 68.

^[10] Giovanni Francesco Loredano, Delle bizzarie academiche, parte seconda (Bologna: Zenero, 1646), 136–37 (digitized at https://www.google.com/books/edition/Delle_bizzarrie_academiche_di_Gio_France/L4XPURUIhbQC?hl=en&gbpv=1): “La maggior gloria della bellezza, è l’esser l’oggetto di tutti gli occhi, e l’anima di tutti i cuori. E povero di merito, e di forze quel bello, che non hà il corteggio di tutte l’anime, e che à guisa d’una soprema intelligenza non regola tutti gli affetti. Ma se la bellezza è pudica, tanto perde di merito, quanto perde d’ossequii; tanto mancano i suoi pregi, quanto mancano gli amanti. Ritrovandosi solamente nell’Idea di Platone, che gli amanti possano amare senza fine impudico. Così dunque la Pudicitia pregiudica alla bellezza, poiche le toglie una moltitudine di seguaci, ed una infinità d’adorationi. Gli occhi sono la perfettione della bellezza del volto, e con ragione, perche sono tutto lume. E non per altro sono situati sotto a gli archi delle ciglie, che per dimostrarci, che portano i trionfi della bellezza. La Pudicitia all’incontro fà abbassare gli occhi.… Ecco dunque come la Pudicitia toglie il suo maggior ornamento alla bellezza, che con ragione all’hora si può dir morta, poiche hà perduti gli occhi.”

^[12] Wendy Heller, Emblems of Eloquence: Opera and Women’s Voices in Seventeenth-Century Venice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), especially 263–94; and Bonnie Gordon, “The Courtesan’s Singing Body as Cultural Capital in Seventeenth-Century Italy,” in The Courtesan’s Arts: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, ed. Martha Feldman and Bonnie Gordon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 185–86.

^[13] Gordon, “The Courtesan’s Singing Body,” 186 and 196 n22; for historical sources regarding the female sexual anatomy and singing, Gordon refers the reader to John Chadwick, ed., The Medical Works of Hippocrates (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1950); John Ferrand, A Treatise on Lovesickness, ed. David A. Beecher and Massimo Ciovaolella (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1990); Soranus, Gynecology, ed. Owsei Temkin (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991); and Mazhar H. Shah, The General Principles of Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine (Karachi: Naveed Clinic, 1966). In regard to the courtesan’s song in general, Gordon cites Tomaso Garzoni da Bagnacavallo, La piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo (Venice: Giovanni, Battista Somasco, 1589), 605 (Gordon, “The Courtesan’s Singing Body,” 185 and 195 n12).

^[14] Ferrante Pallavicino, La retorica delle puttane (Villafranca: D. Elzevier, 1633), 83 (1673 reprint digitized at https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/us5CAAAAcAAJ?hl=en): “Serva l’una al mover li affetti, facendo penetrare li suoi sforzi per li orecchi, li rapisce l’altro insinuandosi per l’occhi. Usi dunque la Puttana anche questa eloquenza corporale, artificiosamente adoperando la lingua, et il movimento delle membra. Giovarà all’efficacia della sua persuasiva con la voce sonora, e variabile secondo i dogmi della musica, essendo il canto come sopra additai un singolarissimo allettamento d’amore.”

^[15] Susan J. Mardinly, “Barbara Strozzi and ‘The Pleasures of Euterpe’ ” (DMA diss., University of Connecticut, 2004), 16–17. Very occasionally an illegitimately born woman or a prostitute could make a good marriage, but only with a huge dowry; see Stanley Chojnacki, Women and Men in Renaissance Venice: Twelve Essays on Patrician Society (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 56–63. On the inflation of the dowry system in the early modern period, see Jutta Gisela Sperling, Convents and the Body Politic in Late Renaissance Venice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), especially 18–71.

^[16] Pietro Aretino, Ragionamento della Nanna e della Antonia ([Venice: Francesco Marcolini], 1534) and Dialogo di M. Pietro Aretino: nel quale la Nanna il primo giorno insegna a la Pippa … che ragionano de la ruffiania ([Venice: Francesco Marcolini], 1536); Pietro Aretino, Sei giornate: ragionamento della Nanna e della Antonia (1534); dialogo nel quale la Nanna insegna a la Pippa (1536), ed. Giovanni Aquilecchia (Bari: Laterza & Figli, 1969), and ed. Angelo Romano (Milan: Mursia, 1991); Raymond Rosenthal, trans., Aretino’s Dialogues (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005).

^[17] Margaret F. Rosenthal, The Honest Courtesan: Veronica Franco, Citizen and Writer in Sixteenth-Century Venice (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992), 130.

^[18] Ann Rosalind Jones and Margaret F. Rosenthal, eds., Veronica Franco: Poems and Selected Letters (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 38–39 (transcription lightly copyedited).

^[20] See Rosand, “Barbara Strozzi, virtuosissima cantatrice,” 257; and Claire Fontijn, “ ‘Sotto la disciplina del Signor Cavalli’: Works by Strozzi and Bembo,” in Fiori musicali: Liber amicorum Alexander Silbiger, ed. Claire Fontijn and Susan Parisi (Sterling Heights, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2010), 165–85.

^[21] Kendrick has suggested that Strozzi’s identification as the artistically admirable but morally dubious “cortegiana onesta” is due more to “the libertine and often misogynist ideology of the Incogniti and Unisoni” than to the facts of Strozzi’s actual situation (Kendrick, “Intent and Intertextuality,” 66. Yet Ellen Rosand’s groundbreaking work on Barbara Strozzi’s biography is extremely illuminating in regard to the role of the composer’s father, not only in launching her musical career, but also in promoting her renown in his literary milieu, in a manner that cannot be extricated from Strozzi’s life, both personal and professional. See Rosand, “Barbara Strozzi, virtuosissima cantatrice”; and Ellen Rosand and Beth L. Glixon, in Grove Music Online, s.v. “Strozzi, Barbara,” published 2001.

^[22] On the Unisoni as a vehicle to display Barbara’s musical prowess and beauty, see Rosand, “Barbara Strozzi, virtuosissima cantatrice,” 244–46, as well as Rosand and Glixon, “Strozzi, Barbara.”

^[24] Le veglie de’ Signori Unisoni havuta in casa del Signor Giulio Strozzi (Venice: Sarzina, 1638); 3 vols. in 1, each with a title page. Satire, et altre raccolte per l’Academia de gl’Unisoni in casa di Giulio Strozzi, I-Vnm Classe X, codice 1155 [7193]; copies of excerpts, I-Vmc Miscellanea P. D. 308C/ IX and Codice Cicogna 2999/ 18. See Rosand, “Barbara Strozzi, virtuosissima cantatrice,” 249–52, especially 250 n31.

^[25] Veglia prima de’ Signori Academici Unisoni havuta in Venetia in casa del Giulio Strozzi (Venice: Sarzina, 1638), sig. A3v: “MOLTO ILLUSTRE Signora. Non ad altri che à V.S. che hà la maggior parte nelle glorie di questa Nuova Academia si devono i frutti, che da lei se ne raccolgono. L’ordinaria legge di consacrare ogn’oggetto à quella Deità da cui benigni influssi proviene; mi obliga à donare le più pregiate primitie di quest’albero innestato di virtù a lei, ch’è il primo mobile in questo cielo. Anzi l’armonia della sua voce lo rende tale; onde ragionevolmente si possa stimare un terreno Paradiso quel luogo, in cui nel vagheggiare le sue bellezze si diletta lo sguardo, e nell’eccellenza del suo canto gode l’orrechio. Indicheranno dunque il merito di V. S. questi fogli vergati de gl’inchiostri, che servono d’ombra à colori della sua virtù; e mentre portano in fronte il suo nome assicurano di partire l’ammiratione de’ suoi pregi in ogni cuore, che habbi senso per le bellezze d’una Venere, ò per la melodia d’un Angelo. Direi da vantaggio se la sua modestia non arrossisse à questi concetti. N.S. la conservi per ornamento del secolo, mentro io l’ammiro per la Fenice de i nostri giorni.”

^[26] On Venus and iconography surrounding the “myth of Venice,” see David Rosand, Myths of Venice: The Figuration of a State (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); Ellen Rosand, “Music in the Myth of Venice,” Renaissance Quarterly 30, no. 4 (1977): 511–37; Heller, Emblems of Eloquence, 2–6; and Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavan, “Toward an Ecological Understanding of the Myth of Venice,” in Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297–1797, ed. John Jeffries Martin and Dennis Romano (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000),39–66.

^[27] John Florio, Queen Anna’s New World of Words, or Dictionarie of the Italian and English Tongues (London: Melch. Bradwood, 1611), 231. “Quaints” is an archaic term for female genitalia.

^[28] The double entendres are manifold for the term “horti.” Florio defines horto as “a gardener. Also a daintie bird so called [an horto]” (Florio, 231).

^[30] Barbara Strozzi, Il primo libro de’ madrigali: soprano partbook, 11–12; contralto, 5–6; tenore, 5–6; continuo, 7. See also Strozzi, Poesie, ed. Aurigi, 5–6.

^[33] Anna’s childhood education included instruction in Latin and music; see Gaetano Pieraccini, La stirpe de’ Medici di Cafaggiolo: Saggio di richerche sulla trasmissione ereditaria dei caratteri biologici, 3 vols. (Florence: Vallechi, 1924; reprint, Florence: Nardini, 1986), 2:546. Pieraccini’s work has come under criticism for his tendency towards biological determinism and eugenics; for more recent scholarship on Medici women, see, for example, Giovanna Benadusi and Judith C. Brown, eds., Medici Women: The Making of a Dynasty in Grand Ducal Tuscany, trans. Monica Chojnacka (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2015).

^[34] On art and music during the regency of Grand Duchess Maria Maddalena, see Kelley Harness, Echoes of Women’s Voices: Music, Art, and Female Patronage in Early Modern Florence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).

^[35] These included Il martirio di Sant’Agata and Cecilia sacra; see Harness, Echoes, especially 68–75.

^[36] Cesti’s importance to Ferdinand Karl cannot be overstated; one visiting virtuoso called Cesti the archduke’s “god of music.” Roger Freitas, Portrait of a Castrato: Politics, Patronage, and Music in the Life of Atto Melani (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 80.

^[37] Walter Senn, in Musik und Theater am Hof zu Innsbruck (Innsbruck: Österreichische Verlagsanstalt, 1954), has provided ample archival information about the musicians (both those regularly employed and visitors) at the Innsbruck court during this period; the roster includes several virtuoso singers and instrumentalists, including opera composer Antonio Cesti and the English gambist William Young. Regarding the public devotional and liturgical practices of Anna and Archduke Ferdinand Karl, see the travel diary of their 1652 Italian tour, which provides information regarding their daily attendance at Mass, and their participation in adoration of the Most Precious Blood of Christ during their visit to Mantua that same year; modern transcription of the travel diary in Thomas Küstler and Veronika Sandbilcher, “Erzfüstetcraiss nacher Welschlandt … de Anno 1652: das Reisetagebuch Erherzog Ferdinand Karls,” in Wissenschaftliches Jahrbuch der tiroler Landesmuseen 2010 (Innsbruck: Studien Verlag, 2010),194–384. Perhaps most closely related to the contents of the Sacri musicali affetti is the confraternity to Saint Anthony of Padua that Anna and Ferdinand Karl founded in Innsbruck that same year; see Didaco da Lequile, Regola, che hanno da osservate i Fratelli e le Sorelle della venerabil Confraternità delle Anime del Purgatorio … Erzherzogin Annae, Prinzezin von Toscana, Anno 1652 (Wagner: Innsbruck, 1657), and Sara Pecknold, “Relics, Processions, and the Sounding of Affections: Barbara Strozzi, the Archduchess of Innsbruck, and Saint Anthony of Padua,” Yale Journal of Music and Religion 2, no. 2 (2016): 77–94.

^[38] Kendrick discusses this, and the fact that Anna’s age at the time of marriage—30 years old—was in fact considered advanced for childbearing in the seventeenth century (“Intent and Intertextuality,” 85–86). In regard to the loss of Anna’s infant in childbirth, Pieraccini notes that the baby was baptized, an event that reflects the Habsburgs’ unwavering commitment to the sacraments of the Catholic Church (see Pieraccini, La stirpe, 2:548; he cites the Archivio Mediceo del Principato (MDP) at I-Fas, fil. 5369, c. 402, and fil. 5499, c. 462: “L’Anna partorisce una femmina. Fu un parto distocico per presentazione, essendo ‘la figlia raddoppiata nel ventre.… Fu il patimento della madre molto grande.’ La neonata ‘uscita dal ventre materno, e munita del santo battesimo, restò estinta.’ ”

^[40] For example, Lucrezia Marinella, La vita di Maria Vergine Imperatrice dell’Universo descritta in prosa et in ottava rima (Venice: Barezzo Barezzi, 1602); translation of 1610 edition in Susan Haskins, ed. and trans., Who Is Mary? Three Early Modern Women on the Idea of the Virgin Mary (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 119–246. “An enlarged … and revised edition was published in 1604 and reprinted in 1610 … with a further edition appearing in 1617 with new material clearly showing [the work’s] popularity” (Haskins, 120). All quotations of Marinella below are taken from Haskins.

^[42] Margaret Morse has noted that most Venetian household inventories from the late Renaissance include a breviary, and such other theological and spiritual works as the Letters of Saint Jerome (Morse, “Creating Sacred Space,” 165–66). It is likely that both Strozzi and her poet owned an edition issued after the reforms of Pope Urban VIII, for example, Breviarium Romanum, Ex decreto Sacrosancti Concilii Tridentini … (Venice: Apud Cieras, 1647). Digitized versions of early modern printed breviaries are today readily available online, e.g., Breviarium Romanum, ex Decreto Sacrosancti Concillii Tridenti … (Rome: Typis Vaticanis, 1632), https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/x5vWwBFbwHcC?hl=en&gbpv=0. The latter will be cited in all references below to the Roman breviary; for the feast of Saint Anne in the 1632 edition, see 921–25.

^[43] Kendrick, “Intent and Intertextuality,” 87–89; 1632 Breviarium Romanum, 922–23.

^[44] For this article, all translations from Latin are by Cari Ring and Sara Pecknold unless noted otherwise.

^[45] I am grateful to Andrew H. Weaver for his initial help in translating Nascente Maria.

^[46] For the Office of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, see the 1632 Breviarium Romanum, 1017–21.

^[51] William F. Prizer, “Wives and Courtesans: The Frottola in Florence,” in Music Observed: Studies in Memory of William C. Holmes, ed. Colleen Reardon and Susan Parisi (Warren, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2004), 408.

^[52] Beth L. Glixon, “New Light on the Life and Career of Barbara Strozzi,” Musical Quarterly 81, no. 2 (1997): 319.

^[55] Glixon, “More on the Life,”138; Glixon quotes Vidman’s final will and testament (Archivio di Stato di Venexia [ASV], Archivio notarile, Testamenti Giovanni Piccini, busta 756, no. 152).

^[57] Glixon has recently presented information about Giulio Strozzi’s personal devotion to the Marian icon, the Madonna della Pace, which was housed for a time in the Chapel of the Confraternity of the Most Holy Name of God in Santi Giovanni e Paolo. Beth Glixon, “Becoming Barbara Strozzi,” paper presented at “Strozzi 400: A Barbara Strozzi Symposium and Concert in Honor of the Composer’s 400th Birthday,” Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, November 23, 2019.

^[58] Glixon, “New Light,” 322–26; Glixon discovered perhaps the most damning evidence regarding Barbara Strozzi’s sexual objectification in a letter to the Duke of Mantua from his Venetian ambassador, Antonio Bosso, who praises Strozzi’s breasts in a rather unseemly manner—ironically, just after Strozzi has sent the fifth opus to Anna de’ Medici.

^[59] In his final will of 1650, Giulio Strozzi writes that he wishes to be buried in the Dominican church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, “where the fathers have shown me grace” (dove quei padri già mi fecero gratia); I have interpreted this remark—alongside Giulio’s obvious attachment to the parish—to indicate that the Dominican fathers of SS. Giovanni e Paolo were Giulio Strozzi’s confessors (ASV, Notarile, Testamenti; Notaio Claudio Paulini, B. 799, no. 269, 1 January 1650; and Rosand, “Barbara Strozzi, virtuosissima cantatrice,” 258–59, especially 258 n68).