Venice, the Serenissima: a name which conveys the powerful myth of the city and the legends that have surrounded it throughout the ages. At the end of the seventh century, a stable political sovereignty had been set up, which lasted more than a millennium, ending only with Napoleon’s invasion in 1797. This political system enabled the city to flourish, and was thus perceived as ideal, the fruit of divine will. Music and painting became powerful tools for the diffusion of this myth, especially during the Renaissance and Baroque periods. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts chose this historical context for its latest exhibition, focusing on the relationship between art and music. These topics have been widely studied and since the pioneering work of scholars such as Emanuel Winternitz and Harry Colin Slim (Winternitz, Musical instruments and their symbolism in Western art: studies in musical iconology, 1979; Slim, Painting music in the sixteenth century: essays in iconography, 2002) the links between art and music have become an important area for research. Venice, as the most important centre for musical production in Renaissance Europe, has deservedly received its share of attention (most notably in Iain Felon’s The Ceremonial City: History, Memory and Myth in Renaissance Venice, 2007). Two exhibitions on this theme were held previously, in 2000: Dipingere la musica: strumenti in posa nell’arte del Cinque e Seicento, curated by Sylvia Ferino Pagden and held in Milan, Cremona and Vienna, and Colori della musica: dipinti, strumenti e concerti tra Cinquecento e Seicento, organised by Annalisa Bini, Claudio Strinati and Rossella Vodret and held in Rome and Siena. These exhibitions were focused on musical iconography and the theme of music in art history. Unlike them, the one presented at the MMFA puts the emphasis upon a place: Venice. This is made abundantly clear in the title, but also in the entrance hall of the exhibition introducing visitors to Venice’s topography by showing a map of the city mounted on stilts, and the sound of the bells of Saint Mark’s campanile ringing.
The city being the main focus of the exhibition, the objects on display are very diverse, ranging from drawings, paintings and prints to musical instruments and scores, dating from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. The curator of the show, MMFA’s Associate Chief Curator and Curator of Old Masters, Hilliard T. Goldfarb, did not organize the exhibition following a chronological structure, but rather a thematic one. Each room attempts to evoke a precise location where art met music in early modern Venice: city squares, private apartments, streets, ospedali, scuole and the opera. The museum itself embodied early modern Venice’s vibrant musical life while the exhibition was on display: twenty concerts related to the show were organised in its brand new auditorium by Arte Musica Foundation, a unique combination in a North American museum. The intimate relationship between art and music was also achieved by the integration of music in the exhibition itself, chosen by musical advisor François Filiatrault. The visitor could listen to numbered pieces on an audio-guide, complementing some of the artefacts displayed in the rooms, and background music in each room corresponded to the different themes.
The first theme of the exhibition is the most obvious witness of Venice’s use of music as political propaganda: public ceremonies. Considering the importance of piety in the city’s life, each religious feast was an opportunity to celebrate with magnificent musical processions. The first room is dedicated to those processions and its scenography attempts to reproduce one. A passage in the centre of the room contains showcases with illuminated manuscripts, music scores, missals, and musical instruments. Two procession poles precede them. The wall at the far end of the room, showing a silhouette of Saint Mark’s Basilica, recreates the atmosphere of a Venetian feast. Important paintings by Francesco Guardi and Canaletto illustrate views of the city with public ceremonies such as Venice’s marriage with the sea, celebrated each year since 1177 on the feast of the Ascension. During this ceremony, the doge, on his ceremonial barge or bucintoro, throws a ring into the Adriatic Sea to signify the union between the city and the sea. Matteo Pagano’s woodcut Procession of the Doge in Venice (1556-61), impressive for the amount of detail depicted, is another wonderful illustration of such processions. Composed of eight sheets, the print unfolds over more than four metres of wall space. Associated with Palm Sunday, the procession is represented like a frieze, with the dignitaries parading one after the other. Their political rank is written beneath each of them, exemplifying the strict hierarchy that determined Venice’s political society. A wonderful and rare drawing by Canaletto, showing a View of the north Transept and the Tribune for singers in San Marco, Venice (1766), expresses cleverly, albeit in a completely different spirit, the liveliness of a religious ceremony accompanied by music.
The second room is dedicated to the practice of music in the private spheres of society. Entering this space, we feel the privacy of a Venetian house, complete with an iron gate, chandeliers and columns. In Renaissance Venice, the study and practice of music was an essential part of aristocratic education for men and women alike. As a result, portraits of musicians, depictions of private concerts and still lifes with musical instruments rose to prominence. Famous works of art such as Titian’s Concert (c. 1511-12) and Giovanni Cariani’s Lute Player (c. 1515) are exhibited. Both paintings are relevant examples of the subtle interplay between invention and reality, characteristic of sixteenth-century Venetian art. In the Renaissance and Baroque periods, musical instruments in paintings often had a precise meaning. For example, the lute was frequently associated with love and this can perhaps shed light on the meaning of Cariani’s enigmatic portrait. Titian’s Concert or concerto interrotto (literally, interrupted concert) is another ambiguous and fascinating work. Many interpretations of the painting have been proposed by scholars but none have been unanimously accepted so far. In his essay in the catalogue, Goldfarb convincingly argues that the painting could simply represent contemporary musicians rehearsing. In fact, the popularity of the theme of musicians and musical instruments in Venetian art can be largely explained by the widespread practice of music among all levels of society. We know that a great number of Venetian artists were musicians and that they could have observed and even owned musical instruments. The ones displayed in the room enable the visitor to notice the accuracy with which painters represented contemporary instruments.
The next room evokes musical activity in the streets. The length and narrowness of the room give spectators the feeling of walking down a Venetian calle. The works of art hung in the room are images of what could have been seen in Venice’s streets at the time: commedia dell’arte outdoor shows and travelling musicians lurking in dark spaces. Above the series of portraits, city views by Guardi and Luca Carlevarijs are also displayed. The diversity of the works of art on display does not convey a feeling of unity, caused to some extent by the lack of explanations linking the objects to the theme in the title plaques. However, as Venice’s streets are also its canals, the relevance of Guardi’s View up the Grand Canal Toward the Rialto (c. 1770-80) is made clearer, especially as a gondola is on display in a secondary room, which can be glimpsed through openings in the wall.
The fourth room, with its octagonal shape, recreates an atmosphere of piety, which recalls the ospedali and scuole. Scuole were pious associations for laymen and ospedali were religious institutions where orphans were taken in and educated. Music was an important part of their education and among their teachers were celebrated musicians such as Antonio Vivaldi, whose music is broadcast in the room. Gabriel Bella’s Orphan Girls Singing for ‘the Dukes of the North’ (before 1792) illustrates the orphans giving a choral performance in front of Catherine the Great’s son and his spouse. Welcoming the city’s prestigious guests with concerts was customary and helped propagate ideas about Venice and its myths.
The final theme of the exhibition is concerned with mythology and opera. The first opera to be staged in Venice took place in 1637 and the number of theatres multiplied in the following years as its popularity increased. The characters found in operas were generally borrowed from the commedia dell’arte and mythology. Mythological characters specifically associated with music, such as Orpheus, Apollo and the Muses, also became important subject matter in painting. They were especially suited to the decoration of harpsichords, which can be seen in paintings such as Jacopo Tintoretto’s The Concert of the Muses for the Gods (c. 1545) and Sebastiano Ricci’s Venus Surrounded by Nymphs Watching a Group of Cupids (1718). The former painting also glorifies music by the inclusion of the figure of Fame. Considering the high esteem music was held in in Venice, it is not surprising that the opera singers themselves were as popular as the characters they embodied. Caricatures of opera singers drawn by Antonio Maria Zanetti in the first half of the eighteenth century provide a wonderful glimpse into the musical life and celebrity gossip of the time. Giustina Turcotti, for example, takes up the entire space of the small sheet of paper on which the artist has represented her: a witty illustration of the celebrity, not only of her voice, but also of her weight… To exit the room and the exhibition, the viewer passes under a large arch recalling theatre sets. This layout is a fitting finale to the scenography of the exhibition, which is, all things considered, very effective.
However, one sensed the lack of an overall plan and argument sustained throughout the exhibition. As mentioned above, the theme of each room and the objects chosen to illustrate them were not always absolutely clear. Hence, it would perhaps have been more intelligible if panels and texts had contained more information about the objects and the music broadcast rather than emphasizing the historical context. Certainly, the goal of the exhibition was to convey the importance of the links between music and art in Venice throughout the Renaissance and Baroque, as the title announced, and it was effective to rely upon historical content in putting forth this relation. Nonetheless, more information concerning the artistic or stylistic significance of the objects and especially their links with Venice’s musical life would have been appreciated. For example, Canaletto’s The Bucintoro at the Molo on Ascension Day (c. 1745) is described as an image of the important ceremony of Venice’s marriage with the sea. The practice of vocal music performed on it is dealt with too briefly and the craftsmanship of Canaletto is not even mentioned. The same issue occurs in the catalogue, also organized thematically. The book reproduces most of the items displayed in the exhibition, but with rather cursory notices, leaving to the thematic essays the task of shedding light on their relevance to the general purpose of the exhibition.
These matters aside, however, it was an ambitious project to create an exhibition about Venice on such a precise and interdisciplinary subject in a North American city. Visitors are generally not familiar with the city’s history and thus required the sort of contextualization that the exhibition provided. From this point of view, this specialized exhibition, designed to appeal to a wide audience, represents a great achievement.
Splendore a Venezia: Art and Music from the Renaissance to Baroque in Venice was at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts from 12 October 2013 to 19 January 2014. It is showing under the title Venice: The Golden Age of Art and Music at the Portland Art Museum, Oregon, from 15 February to 11 May 2014.
The exhibition is accompanied by the catalogue Art and Music in Venice: From the Renaissance to the Baroque, edited by Hilliard T. Goldfarb (Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in collaboration with Éditions Hazan, Paris, 2013). Distributed by Yale University Press.