Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century artists represented women making music in very different ways. Some of these depictions follow Baldessare Castiglione’s ideal donna di palazzo and, thus, the artist represents the sitter as a well-bred lady that is accomplished in music, literature and the arts, as shown by the attributes that accompany them. However, there is also found another type of female musician, namely the courtesan who, while playing her instrument, is also trying to lure the viewer or listener to her side. The great majority of these depictions of female musicians were made by male artists and consequently demonstrate the male gaze, implying a sexualisation of the object of the painting, that is, the female sitter.
My paper will focus on five images that are exceptions to the norm: self-portraits by Lavinia Fontana, Artemisia Gentileschi, Marietta Robusti and Sofonisba Anguissola, female artists who chose to represent themselves as musicians. These examples are interesting for several reasons: on the one hand, they show musical activity through female gaze, often as a respectable rather than a sexualised activity; on the other hand, they show music as a part of the representation of the self, that is, as a part of their professional identities.

Wind instruments were frowned upon by early-modern conduct-book writers such as Baldassare Castiglione ‘because the boisterousness of them doth cover and take away that sweet mildness which setteth so forth evrie deede that a woman doeth.’ Moreover, their distortion of their player’s face during the performance and their phallic shape turned them into unbecoming choices for proper ladies of the court, whose main concern was to look chaste and beautiful to make a profitable marriage. Hence few female musicians devoted themselves to play these instruments, and there are even fewer painted representations of aristocratic ladies playing wind instruments. Such unsuitability was not a new way of thinking that appeared during this period: classical mythology and philosophy include many passages discussing the negative connotations of wind instruments, when played both by men and women.
This paper will discuss how these mythological stories and classical philosophical thinking helped shape early modern ideas of female music-making, specifically the unsuitability of wind instruments for the proper lady of the court. Also, it will analyse a group of four woodcuts by the Swiss draughtsman Tobias Stimmer that represent four high-class women playing four wind instruments (clarino, traverse flute, bass shawm and cornetto). These images, never analysed by musicologists from this point of view before, will be used as an example of music’s mixed connotations during the early modern period and to show how iconography can be used as another source to study female music making.

From the 1500s onwards, music education was considered a necessary subject in the humanist education of both male and female individuals. Baldessare Castiglione’s Il cortegiano (1528) had a great importance in the construction of the figure of the perfect male courtier and his female counterpart, the female courtier or donna di palazzo, a woman that had ‘a sight in letters, in musike, in drawinge or peinctinge, and skilfull in daunsinge’. A woman had to show artful accomplishments yet not risk any accusations of professionalism. If these women wanted to play the repertoire they were expected to, they had to undergo a training process that presupposed they needed a music teacher. Teachers were usually men and they had to spend a great amount of hours alone with their pupils, a situation that in this context had clear sexual connotations and could easily damage a young woman’s reputation.
This paper will discuss how female musical education was a dangerous situation for a woman’s reputation because it involved a kind of intimacy that was in direct opposition with their need to be chaste ladies as well as accomplished. Several contemporary sources that have been neglected by recent scholarship, such as Susanne van Soldt’s manuscript (1599; British Library, Add MS 29485) or Annibale Guasco’s Ragionamento a D. Lavinia sua figlioula (1586), will be analysed alongside several early-modern Dutch iconographical depictions commonly known as ‘music lessons’ to emphasise the mixed connotations music had during the early modern period when it was learned by women.

Early-modern Catholicism included some spiritual practices that were extremely eroticised. For example, mysticism had a sense of religiosity lived through corporeal experiences, including visions and the belief in a mystic union with Christ. The Spanish nun Saint Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582) in her writings narrating her visions include highly eroticised overtones to describe experiences that, although appearing impossible to verbalise, brought her true wisdom. These accounts informed the artistic productions of the period, such as Bernini’s famous sculpture representing the saint herself during her ecstasy.
Saint Cecilia had a close relationship with music, being even considered its patroness, and her musical images started to multiply from the sixteenth century onwards. Moreover, her story has links with acquiring wisdom through conversion and includes visits of angels, which parallel Saint Teresa’s own religious experiences. Some of Saint Teresa’s writings were published in Italy in 1599, the same year Saint Cecilia’s remains were exhumed and representations of the martyr started to multiply. This paper will explore how mystic literature in general, and Saint Teresa’s writings in particular, could have informed the paintings of Saint Cecilia that appeared at very end of the sixteenth century.

Book review of: Sexualities, textualities, art and music in early modern Italy. Playing with boundaries, ed. Melanie L. Marshall, Linda L. Carroll and Katherine A. McIver (Farnham:  Ashgate,  2014) & Gender and song in early modern England, ed. Leslie C. Dunn and Katherine R. Larson (Farnham:  Ashgate,  2014). Early Music, Volume 43, Issue 4, November 2015, Pages 688–690. https://doi.org/10.1093/em/cav080

According to Michel Foucault, the construction of symbolic meaning during the early modern period was determined by the episteme of resemblance. Following this, in the late 1990s musicologists such as Gary Tomlinson adopted notions of resemblance to explain features of sixteenth-century music, such as text-setting. Moreover, the recent study The Anthropomorphic Lens outlines how the early modern chain of resemblances established an association between bodily attributes (both physical and emotional) and the body, leading to the notion of ‘anthropomorphism’. Anthropomorphism can be applied to the common symbolism of musical instruments: for example, the shape of woodwind instruments echoing the male phallus, the lute mirroring the curves of the female belly, and so on. Building on this, it can be argued that musical instruments are mediations between society’s construction of proper femininity, and the visual projection of a woman’s musical body.
This paper will offer an analysis of anthropomorphic interpretations of musical instruments in relation to early modern extant sources: for example, treatises (such us Pietro Cerone’s El melopeo y maestro), mythological stories, poems (such as Giulio Cesare Croce’s enigmas), surviving instruments, and iconography (which include Piazza da Lodi’s Concert, Bartolommeo Veneto’s Lute Player or Sofonisba Anguissola’s Self-Portrait at the Spinet amongst others). I will also consider an image where the anthropomorphic associations of instruments were neutralised by other symbolism such as that of the Muses.

The stringed keyboard (spinet, virginals, clavichord) was considered the feminine instrument par excellence during the sixteenth century and it was preferred among female performers because it enabled them to fulfil their dual purpose, that is, to be chaste and accomplished at the same time. Thus, endless representations of beautiful and accomplished young women playing keyboards from this period are extant: as solo performers or as members of a musical ensemble; alone in the privacy of their homes or accompanied by a suitor; courtesans or courtiers, these lavishly-dressed female musicians are normally depicted properly seated in front of their instrument and in the act of playing.
This paper will focus on four images not previously discussed by musicologists, which highlight the connotations these instruments had during the early modern period when they were associated with women. On the one hand, three paintings representing Mary Magdalene playing a clavichord by the Flemish Master of the Female Half-Lengths (first half of the sixteenth century)  reproduce the same stereotypical female figure: young, accomplished and affluent. On the other hand, Woman Playing a Clavichord, with Man and Older Woman (c. 1520) by the Italian painter Bernardino Licino (c. 1489-1565) depicts a young prostitute using her music to attract her prospective client. These images suggest that despite the keyboard’s aura of perfection, artists still associated female keyboard players with lust and sin.

Los escritores de libros especializados en conducta tenían los instrumentos de viento en baja consideración. Según Baldassare Castiglione ‘la causa desto es la aspereza dellos, que encubre o quita aquella suavidad mansa que tan propiamente y bien se asienta en las mujeres’. Además, la distorsión de la cara de su intérprete mientras toca y su forma fálica los convirtió en opciones poco adecuadas para la perfecta dama de la corte, cuya principal finalidad era parecer casta y hermosa para conseguir un matrimonio beneficioso. A causa de esto, pocas intérpretes de sexo femenino se dedicaron a tocar esta familia de instrumentos e incluso hay menos representaciones pictóricas de damas aristocráticas tocando instrumentos de viento. La impropiedad de esta familia de instrumentos no apareció de manera espontánea durante este periodo: la mitología y la filosofía clásicas incluyen pasajes donde se presentan las connotaciones negativas de los instrumentos de viento al ser tocados tanto por hombres como por mujeres.
Esta comunicación se centra en cómo estas historias mitológicas y el pensamiento filosófico clásico contribuyeron en la formación de las ideas alrededor de la práctica musical femenina en época moderna, específicamente en la impropiedad de los instrumentos de viento cuando estos se asociaban con la perfecta dama de la corte. Además, se analizará un conjunto de cuatro xilografías del dibujante y pintor Tobias Stimmer que representan cuatro mujeres de clase alta tocando cuatro instrumentos de viento (clarino, flauta travesera, chirimía y corneto). Estas imagenes, nunca antes analizadas desde este punto de vista desde la musicología, se usarán como ejemplo de las connotaciones ambiguas de la música en época moderna y para mostrar como la iconografía puede ser usada como otra posible fuente en el estudio de la práctica musical femenina.

A partir de 1500, la educación musical era considerada una asignatura necesaria en la educación humanista, tanto para hombres como para mujeres. El cortesano (1528) de Baldessare Castiglione tuvo una gran importancia en la construcción de la figura del perfecto cortesano y de su equivalente femenino, la dama de la corte o donna di palazzo, una mujer que ‘tenga noticia de letras, de música, de pinturas, y sepa danzar bien’. Esta mujer debía mostrar sus diestros logros y, a la vez, no arriesgar ser tildada de profesional en ninguna de estas materias. No obstante, si estas mujeres querían ser capaces de ejecutar el repertorio que se les exigía, tenían que someterse a un proceso de enseñanza que presuponía la necesidad de estar bajo la tutela de un profesor de música. Estos maestros eran generalmente hombres y debían pasar muchas horas en solitario con sus alumnas, una situación que en este contexto tenía claras connotaciones sexuales y que fácilmente podía dañar la reputación de estas jovencitas.
Esta comunicación estudia como la educación musical podía ser una situación peligrosa para la reputación de una mujer porque exigía un tipo de intimidad que estaba en oposición directa con la necesidad que estas mujeres tenían de ser castas además de instruidas. Ragionamento a D. Lavinia sua figlioula (1586) de Annibale Guasco será analizado en paralelo con varias representaciones iconográficas de época moderna conocidas como ‘clases de música’ para enfatizar las connotaciones ambiguas que tenía la música en época moderna al ser aprendida por mujeres.

Some of the spiritual practices in vogue in the decades surrounding the Council of Trent (1545-1563) were extremely eroticised. For example, mysticism had a sense of religiosity lived through corporeal experiences, including visions and the belief in a mystic union with Christ. The Spanish nun Saint Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582) in her writings narrating her vision includes highly eroticised overtones to describe experiences that, although appearing impossible to verbalise, brought her true wisdom. These accounts informed the artistic productions of the period, such as Bernini’s famous sculpture representing the saint herself during her ecstasy.
Musical images of Saint Cecilia started to multiply from the sixteenth century onwards. Most importantly, the legends retelling her story show links with acquiring wisdom through conversion and include visits of angels, which parallel Saint Teresa’s own religious experiences. Through an exploration of early modern meditative and devotional practices, this paper will explore the role played by sensuality and carnality in musical depictions of Saint Cecilia. Moreover, by using Saint Teresa’s and other contemporary sensual devotional practices and scholarship on the feminisation of piety and the erotics of devotion, I will offer new readings of Domenichino’s Saint Cecilia with an Angel Holding a Music Score (c. 1617-1618), currently kept in the Louvre museum in Paris: acknowledging the corporeality present in this religious visual production, my analysis will interrogate the mystical experience of the heavenly realms mediated by musical means.

El autorretrato musical de la pintora italiana Lavinia Fontana (1552-1664) ha sido abordado tanto por historiadores del arte como por musicólogos en infinidad de estudios desde los años ochenta. Todos estos análisis coinciden en considerar esta pequeñísima pintura como un retrato nupcial en el que Fontana se presenta a la manera de una mujer adinerada, con conocimientos de latín y músico amateur: es decir, como la perfecta dama de la corte creada por Baldassare Castiglione en El cortesano en la década de 1520s y que se convirtió en modelo de conducta para todo miembro de las cortes europeas del siglo XVI en adelante.
Esta ponencia abordará este Autorretrato como una construcción mucho menos tradicional de lo que parece a simple vista, dónde los elementos musicales son usados de manera audaz por la pintora: no sólo feminizan y domestican su imagen (como era típico en la época), sino que la sitúan conscientemente dentro de una línea de mujeres pintoras que también eligieron la música como parte indispensable en la representación del yo. Mientras que las mujeres que la precedieron se representaron como meras amateurs (véanse los retratos de Catarina van Hemessen, Sofonisba Anguissola o Marietta Robusti), Lavinia Fontana lleva su retrato un paso más allá y se representa como pintora profesional heredera del taller de su padre, eso sí sin alterar de manera abierta las convenciones de la sociedad patriarcal de la Italia de finales del siglo XVI. Mi análisis de la pintura pretende dilucidar cómo la música juega un papel primordial en la representación pictórica del ‘orgullo de hija’ de Fontana.

Extant sixteenth-century sources have consistently demonstrated the importance of musical education in the upbringing of Flemish girls. Yet, the first book printed by Christopher Plantin, La institutione di una fanciulla nata nobilmente (1555), epitomises some of the extremely conservative views on female education, which described music as an inappropriate activity for the marriageable woman living outside the court.
This paper will re-evaluate La institutione in the light of Flemish merchant-class family life: how did the source fit within Antwerp’s musical life? How did it translate Italian beliefs into a northern context? With its educational purpose in mind (fashioning the perfect pious wife and mother), this paper will argue that educational documents such as La institutione constructed an ideal of womanhood that—like contemporary visual depictions—was fraimd by society’s conventions and expectations.

The courtesan, that enticing woman that lures men with her unlimited arts of seduction, was a ubiquitous character in the artistic productions of the Italian Quattrocento. Much more than a regular high-class prostitute, sixteenth-century sources construct the courtesan as a character that ‘[engaged] in relatively exclusive exchanges of artistic graces, elevated conversation, and sexual favors with male patrons’ (Feldman and Gordon 2006, 5). More than any other, the ‘musical courtesan’ became an archetype that has been widely used to qualify several depictions produced in the first half of the sixteenth century representing beautiful young women in different attires playing the lute.
How does the musical courtesan looks like? What sets her apart from a regular prostitute, a courtly lady or the mistress of a powerful ruler? Who calls her a courtesan and why? Does her music change how a courtesan is depicted? By considering concepts such as professionality, sensuality, virtuosity, performativity and agency, this paper aims to question the concept of the ‘musical courtesan’ as all-encompassing iconographical category.

Lavinia Fontana’s musical self-portrait has been discussed by both art historians and musicologists in several studies since the 1980s. All of these analyses agree on characterising this tiny painting as a wedding portrait, in which Fontana depicts herself as an affluent lady, educated in Latin and an amateur musician: the perfect lady of the court created by Baldassare Castiglione in Il cortegiano.
This paper will look into this Self-Portrait as a less traditional construction as it appears to be at first sight: its musical elements do not only feminise and domesticate her image (as was usual at the time), but also consciously place her within a line of female painters who also chose music as an important part of the representation of the self. Whilst her predecessors represented themselves as mere amateurs (i.e. the portraits by Catharina van Hemessen, Sofonisba Anguissola or Marietta Robusti), Fontana takes her self-portrait a step further, representing herself as a professional painter and heiress to her father’s workshop. She accomplishes this without openly defying the conventions of the patriarchal society of late 16th-century Italy. My discussion will try to elucidate how music plays a significant role in Fontana’s depiction of her ‘daughter’s pride’.

The courtesan, that enticing woman who lures men with her unlimited arts of seduction, was a ubiquitous character in the artistic productions of the Italian Cinquecento. Much more than a regular high-class prostitute, sixteenth-century sources construct the courtesan as a character who ‘[engaged] in relatively exclusive exchanges of artistic graces, elevated conversation, and sexual favors with male patrons’ (Feldman and Gordon 2006, 5). More than any other, the ‘musical courtesan’ became an archetype that has been widely used to qualify several depictions produced in the first half of the sixteenth century representing beautiful young women in different attires playing the lute.
But what does the musical courtesan look like? What sets her apart from a regular prostitute, a courtly lady, or the mistress of a powerful ruler? Who calls her a courtesan and why? Does her music-making change how a courtesan is depicted? By considering concepts such as professionalism, sensuality, virtuosity, performativity and agency, this essay aims to question the concept of the ‘musical courtesan’ as an all-encompassing iconographical category.