Tapestry: Music
Unknown (French)
Additional titles
The seven liberal arts
- Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
[Museum inv. no.: 15.1241]
Item location
Description
Description from museum website:The composition celebrates Music, one of the seven Liberal Arts. The figure of Music, represented as a richly dressed woman, sits on a throne in an arched niche at the left side of the field. Her name, MUSICQUE, appears as an inscription near her mouth. With her left hand she plays a small portable organ resting on one arm of the throne, while the fingers of the right hand follow notes marked on a sheet of music held by an attendant. A fashionably dressed minstrel sits playing a dulcimer in the extreme foreground, at the lower left. Other minstrels playing harp, lute, flute or rebec, and a jester playing bagpipes, form a group in the middle right. A nude child blows trumpet before Music's throne, while a second child plays the triangle among the musicians at the right. A man pumping the bellows behind the small organ comletes the group of human figures. The entire company are depicted in a flower garden, the grass strewn with blossoming plants and the back wall formed of a trellis overgrown with roses. The end of a building and a part of a garden wall appear at the far right beyond the trellis-arch. In the lower corner of the field, just above the guard, there is a scroll inscribed as follows: INVENERE LOCUM PER ME MODULAMINA VOCUM DAT NOTULA SCIRE MUSICA DOCTA LIRE. This inscription has been interpreted in a number of different ways.
Iconclass
49C124'Musica' ( ~ quadrivium) 'Musica' (Ripa)
48CC70
'Musica', symbolic representations, allegories and emblems ~ music; 'Musica'(Ripa) - CC - out of doors
48CC753
more than one musician with instrument - CC - 'concert champêtre'
41A6
garden
Instruments [MIMO Code] (notes)
Dulcimer [3644] (played with hammers (beaters))Portative organ [2267]
End-blown trumpet [6556] (curved)
Harp [3285]
Lute [3394]
Fiddle [3142]
Cornett [3868] (identification uncertain)
Transverse flute [4093]
Bagpipe [3746]
Triangle (with rings)
RIdIM images
