\nIt has happened to all of us during a visit to a church, a museum or an ancient noble
\npalace, to glimpse whole or fragmentary frescoes on the walls depicting angels playing
\nmusic. In the same way, similar discoveries are made on the bas-reliefs of baptistery or
\ncathedral portals and even on the miniatures of ancient incunabula, to the attentive eye of
\na luthier specialising in the reconstruction of musical instruments, such identification can
\ntrigger a research process that could end with the creation of a copy or interpretation of the
\ninstrument and bring it back to play the music it once played in front of an attentive and
\nknowledgeable public.
\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/liuteriatoscana.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/DSC_8317-300x200.jpg\")
The first problem facing the violin maker may seem easy to solve at first glance, but in fact\nit is not at all, and I will explain why.
\nOften the artist who paints or sculpts a musician angel playing an instrument, whatever it
\nmay be, has an eye on the same instrument in the hands of the model and usually tends to
\nreproduce it as closely as possible to what he sees. A fairly important example of this
\nbehaviour is very clear in Caravaggio, in many of his paintings a violin and a lute are
\nreproduced and if you look carefully you can see that they are the same instruments every
\ntime, which not only means that they were Merisi’s property but that he reproduced them
\nprecisely whenever he needed to.
\nHowever, Caravaggio’s behaviour was not followed by everyone, in many cases artists
\nreproduced the instruments from memory but also in an approximate manner since in most
\ncases the focus and importance of the work was on the main figures, madonnas,
\ncrucifixions, famous episodes from the bible or the gospel.
\nThis has meant that we are often faced with an instrument that is difficult to classify, is it a
\nviella or a lyre? Is it a lute or a citola?
\nThe trick of counting the number of strings stretched out on the table or the number of
\npegs on the anklet is not always conclusive, since very often the strings are not there or
\nthere are an impossible number, and the pegs are added at random by an inattentive pupil
\n(cases of a different number of strings and pegs on the same instrument are not rare).
\nThere are also artists who have reproduced the instrument from life but have embellished
\nit with gold leaf decorations or even small paintings that did not exist in the original.
\nFor the moment, I will only say that it seems that there are also particularly imaginative
\nartists who have reproduced instruments of pure fantasy that do not exist in the general
\nhistoriography of music, but this is a separate chapter that must be tackled calmly, since it
\nis not certain that an instrument that today seems impossible was not one of the many
\nexperiments that luthiers, stimulated by increasingly demanding musicians, created over
\nthe centuries.
\nAnother problem that has to be faced every time is that of measurements and ratios. Let
\nme explain in greater detail: once it has been established that a certain angel musician
\nplays a vielle, if we want to reconstruct it, it is necessary that the length of the neck and of
\nthe vibrating string are at least compatible with the requirements of modern string-makers;
\notherwise, even if the instrument represented is a vielle that really existed, it would be
\nimpossible for a modern musician to play it, and it is often very difficult, if not impossible, to
\nfind strings that do not break during the tuning phase; Moreover, most of the time the
\ninstrument is represented from a perspective that makes it particularly difficult to recreate a
\nusable form, and in other cases a part, very often the anklet, remains behind the heads of
\nother characters in the work of art, entrusting any reconstruction exclusively to the luthier’s
\nimagination.
\nLet’s say that up to this point the problems are fairly easy to solve, since we are faced with
\ntreatises and historical musical writings in which the instruments are described quite
\nprecisely, and if this is not the case, we are faced with poems and motets that speak of the
\ninstruments in a fairly precise manner. In short, by studying and reading, the careful violin
\nmaker has the weapons at his disposal to deal with all the little problems that come his
\nway. Often, in the face of a very precise representation of the instrument, there is the
\nstrange absence of some fundamental part, usually the bridge or the nut; at other times, in
\nthe face of a very shoddy work, or perhaps one that has been underpaid by the requesting
\nparty, one can admire instruments that are represented in a precise and accurate manner,
\nwith all the parts in their place and with a practically perfect neck-case and vibrating string
\nratio worthy of a modern instrument.
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/liuteriatoscana.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/174137105_3938312539568132_6336796877480034971_n-300x225.jpg\")
\nThis is how luthiers have always worked, succeeding in reconstructing, to a greater or
\nlesser extent, almost all the instruments that appear on works of art in general, and to a
\ncertain extent the fact remains that they have also succeeded in standardising many of
\nthem, among them certainly the ribeca, the vielle and the lute.
\nOne aspect that is quite interesting and not to be overlooked is the fact that we have often
\nlost sight of how rich and varied the musical world was in the past. It would be enough to
\ngo and read – and I love to do this – the inventories of the instruments owned by sixteenthcentury
\norchestras, usually in the papers of the various music conservatories into which
\nthe collections that had previously been at the disposal of the families that decided the
\nhistory of Renaissance cities have converged; There is one from a 17th-century Venetian
\norchestra where the names of instruments appearing in the same list create great
\nconfusion. Here are a few examples: alongside six violins and four violas, and so far so
\ngood, there are two large violins, a violetta, two small violins, a violina and a small viola, \u201ca
\nsmall cello stile instrument\u201d. Well, in the absence of any other description, what was the
\ndifference between a small viola and a large violin? And between a violin and a small
\nviolin? In short, it is clear that perhaps we have not yet discovered everything about the
\nhistory of musical instruments.
\nIn the light of the above, are we really sure when certain instruments are classified as
\nfantasy reconstructions linked to the creativity of the artists and the choreographic
\nrequirements of the work in which they appear? The instruments in Della Robbia’s
\nCantoria at the Museo dell’Opera in Florence have been classified as “fantasy”, as have
\nsome of the instruments depicted by Gaudenzio Ferrari at the Sanctuary of Saronno. Well,
\nin my opinion, all the instruments depicted in these works are real instruments, there is
\nnothing to say the contrary, and I intend to prove it by reconstructing them myself.
\nFabio Chiari<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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