Zdravko Blaekovi, Andrea Schiavones Symbolism of Musical Instruments

1. Andrea Schiavone, Orpheus. Split, Galerija Umjetnina.

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WHAT MARSYAS MAY HAVE MEANT TO THE CINQUECENTO VENETIANS, OR ANDREA SCHIAVONES SYMBOLISM OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
ZDRAVKO BLAEKOVI
City University of New York, The Graduate Center

The opening paragraphs of many essays on the Croatian Renaissance mention the Ottomans and the Serenissima in the same sentence, qualifying them together and both equally as the menace of Croatia. However, as soon as such an introduction is completed, the text goes on about the Humanistic influences spreading from the Italian centers to towns of the Croatian coast, about extensive commercial and cultural ties between Dalmatian and Italian ports, about Schiavoni who played, composed, and printed music in the Serenissima, maintaining there their art workshops and supported fraternities which were centers of rich artistic endeavors. This menacing Serenissima provided opportunities and freedom for artistic work to a continuous stream of Schiavoni who stayed there, or through the Laguna continued their trips on to the other Apenine centers. Unlike the Serenissima, the vast Ottoman lands had very little to offer to the Croatian artists; the respect that Schiavoni received in the Laguna was not offered to Christians in the lands ruled by the Porte. There is no archival document relating to Andrea Schiavones birthdate, but the current scholarship dates it to about 1510,1 just over a decade before the battle at Mohcs (29 August 1526), in which the victorious Suleiman the Magnificent killed a large number of Hungarian and Croatian royals and nobles, soon to march into the heart of Europe and three years later appear for the first time under the walls of Vienna. The decades of Schiavones youth coincided with the time when the Ottomans came close to the Adriatic coast, continuously attacking the Croatian fortifications. This prompted a large number of Dalmatians to leave for more secure centers on the other side of the Adriatic. The exodus from Dalmatia to the Serenissima was at one of its peaks at this time, and it is hard to believe that all Schiavoni living around S. Pietro di Castello thought of Venice as a menace. Without their new home in the Serenissima and without their rich and powerful patrons there, they would not be able to achieve the superiority in their artistry which they so often had. One of these artists, who did not feel inferior for being a Schiavone in Venice, was Andrea Meldolla detto Schiavone (ca. 1510 1 December 1563). Although his family, who settled in Zadar from Meldolla in the Romagna, was not Slavonic by origin and he signed his prints with the initials A.M., already Vasari identified him in his Libro de disegni as Andrea da Zara pittor Schiavone, and he remains identified as Schiavone in the collective mind of art historians since. Collecting bits and pieces of Croatian cultural past, Ivan Kukuljevi Sakcinski (18161889), in his enthusiasm about establishing Schiavones Croatness, took the liberty of Croationizing his family name Meldolla to Meduli. Scholarship outside of Croatia rejected such a revision, but his name became associated with his national affiliation in a different way and, ironically, his origin became in it even more prominent than Kukuljevi could ever desire. More than any other Schiavone, he became a personification of the archetypal Dalmatian cinquecento artist who found in the Serenissima his artistic milieu. On the most general level, Schiavones paintings and prints are concentrated on two themes: sacred subjects and mythological stories. Among his works, there are no genre scenes showing life in Venetian squares or in palaces. His scenes usually show a small painted space, without a large amount of detail. Intricate mythological narratives, once considered to be by him, now are reattributed to other artists.2 Rather than grasping large-scale epic scenes, he was interested in presenting the essence of the dramatic action through an expression of his figures at a single moment of the narrative, when the dramatic tension of the story reached its climax. One such composition is his Orpheus [fig. 1].3 In the darkness of the underworld Orpheus is sitting on a rock and playing his lira da braccio. In the 1560s, the dark palette completely swept Venetian painting, but Schiavone was at the

2001 Research Center for Music Iconography CUNY

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Zdravko Blaekovi, Andrea Schiavones Symbolism of Musical Instruments

2. Andrea Schiavone, Parnassus. Oil on panel, 29,5 70,2 cm. Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemldesammlungen, no. 40.

forefront of those who were experimenting with darkened overall tonalities in Venice as early as in the 1540s and was the pioneer at the time when it was still an artistic exception.4 His Orpheus is a true night scene. With brown undertones, he transformed the Cerberus guarding Euridice into a simple remark, the beast is nearly indistinguishable in deep dusk, and the trees are impressionistically evoked and can hardly be seen. All that he felt important to express was the loneliness of Orpheus as he concentrated on his instrument and his music. One could say that the literary account of the Orpheus story requires a night scene here, since Orpheus was not allowed to look at Euridice until they had reached the light of day, but the subject was rarely approached this way and it is not hard to argue that his reasoning here for a dark palette was as much a part of the narrative of the story as the artistic style he was developing at the time. In Schiavones entire output, the panel painting of Parnassus includes the largest number of instruments, although it is not his most characteristic work regarding the musical content [fig. 2].5 A comparison of the panel with Raphaels Parnassus in the Stanza della Segnatura shows substantial similarities, which become even more apparent in comparison with Marcantonio Raimondis etching of Raphaels working drawings for the Vatican fresco (Bartsch 247; fig. 3). Here we see the complete metamorphosis of the composition, from Raphaels early ideas reproduced by Raimondi, to Schiavones oil panel. It was not unusual for Schiavone to take works by other artists as a starting point for his own compositions, recasting them to suit his own ideas. Schiavone had never been to the Eternal City and had not seen Raphaels 1511 fresco above the window looking out into the Cortile del Belvedere, but engravings by Raimondi (1470/821527/34) were widely circulating at the time and readily available to him.6 On Raphaels fresco, Apollo is sitting on a rock and, surrounded by the Muses, playing the lira da braccio. In the left-hand group Calliope is seated and holding a thyrsis; behind are Euterpe, Clio, and Thalia. On Apollos right are Melpomene, Erato, Terpsichore, Urania, and Polyhymnia. On either side are included the most important Greek, Roman, and contemporaneous poets as their consorts.7 Raimondi preserved the overall composition, but the details are different, possibly reflecting Raphaels early ideas which were either amended or rejected in the final execution. The Muses are differently organized: Calliope holds a long straight trumpet rather than a thyrsis, and Apollo plays a stylized ancient lyre rather than a lira da braccio. Five putti are flying above the Muses, holding laurel wreaths.

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3. Marcantonio Raimondi after Raphael, Parnassus. London, The British Museum, Print Room.

Schiavones modification of Raimondis design is of importance in demonstrating his methods of reworking other masters. Here, he made a very loose interpretation of Raimondi, placing his rocky hilltop of Mount Helicon in a landscape which opens up in the background, showing a valley in which in the earthly landscape mortals are walking in their fields and a castle is in the distance. With this change Schiavone achieved a new effect, emphasizing that Parnassus is a mountain, high and unreachable by common people. While Raphaels Parnassus is an abstract space and cannot be located, Schiavones is placed in a visual context which appears real and specific. He was able to introduce this revision into his composition since all of the many poets and men of letters that Raphael and Raimondi included are reduced to only one group on the far left, what opened a new prospective. In front of the blind Homer, with his face raised to the heavens, is a seated youth holding an open book and writing down Homers words. Dante and Virgil are standing behind Homer on either side. Schiavone turned Raphaels and Raimondis three groups of trees into three single trees, defining with them the inner space of Helicon, where Apollo and the Muses mingle. Here, the Muses exchanged places and instruments again: Calliope is holding a straight trumpet, Euterpe is sitting holding an S-trumpet, Melpomene behind Euterpe has a dagger in her right hand, Urania is pointing toward the stars, Polyhimnia (turned with her back toward the viewer) is holding a syrinx. As in Raimondis version, Apollo is playing the ancient lyre. From Raimondis print, Schiavone retained the putti holding laurel wreaths, although he is placing them differently in the space. On the right-hand side Schiavone added a player of a stylized cornu. It is obvious that Schiavone used instruments to pinpoint his composition in antiquity. The two quasi-lur-shaped trumpets on his Birth of Jupiter (Richardson 325) [fig. 4],8 which comprise the single element identifying the temporal context of the paintings content, have the same function. 33

Zdravko Blaekovi, Andrea Schiavones Symbolism of Musical Instruments

4. Andrea Schiavone, The birth of Jupiter. Oil on panel, 30 32,4 cm. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, no. GG1991.

In looking for representations of musical scenes in Schiavones paintings, one should not try to find organologically accurate instruments or real scenes of music making. His instruments are reserved for symbolic situations and used as attributes of the featured protagonists, among whom Apollo remained the most prominent throughout his artistic opus: Apollos encounters with Daphne or Cupid, his contests with the Phrygian satyr Marsyas or with Pan, or Apollo Musagetes sitting at Parnassus. As for Apollos musical contests, there were in ancient mythology two stories; in both Apollo was the winner. One story describes his competition with Pan. Here, Apollo showed his superiority in lyre-playing over Pans performance on the syrinx and the mountain god Tmolus, who judged the competition, easily decided that the god of fields and woods from Arcadia was not equal to Apollo. The only casualty of this event was King Midas, who happened to be present at the competition. Disagreeing with Tmoluss verdict he offended Apollo, who rewarded him with a pair of asss ears, the emblem of brainless judgment. The other legend, which had a tragic outcome, was the contest between Marsyas and Apollo. This story, often confused with the fable of Pan, begins when Pallas Athena invented the pipes. She became very good at playing them and used to entertain other Olympians. But when Hera and Aphrodite started making fun of her cheeks, puffed up from playing, she threw the instrument away in a Phrygian wood. Marsyas found the pipes, which were cursed by Athena, 34

Music in Art XXVI/1-2 (2001) and he was able to play divine music, greatly pleasing with it his Phrygian compatriots who considered him to be even better than Apollo. Marsyass pride in his musical skills enraged Apollo and he challenged Marsyas to a contest in which the winner was allowed to impose any penalty he chose upon the loser. The judgment was this time passed by the Muses who, needless to say, favored Apollonian beauty. Declared the victor, Apollo tied Marsyas to a pine tree and flayed him alive. Some ancient accounts of the story say that the River Marsyas in Phrygia originated from Marsyass blood, while the others say that the river was formed from the tears of satyrs, nymphs, shepherds, and his pupil Olympus. The story describing Apollos attempt to demonstrate his divine perfection through the music of his lyre has a universal and timeless meaning which has fascinated artists from antiquity to the late sixteenth century, when it faded away and was replaced by the more light-hearted motif of the competition between Apollo and Pan. But, as Winternitz pointed out, it was not before the close of the quattrocento, however, with the vogue of great solo performers and improvisers, that the Marsyas myth as a musical contest recaptured the artistic imagination.9 At that time it became a standard scene which many cinquecento Venetian artist attempted to produce.10 Although he never approached the subject as a single narrative, depicting the entire story in the frame of the same painting as for example, Bronzno did on his famous Hermitage panel once attributed to Correggio, or Bonifazio Veronese on his painting at the Accademia Schiavone was repeatedly returning to the key elements of the story rendering it both as drawings and as paintings. As he had always done, in choosing only one dramatic fragment for each work, he was able to intensify its dramatic action to the fullest extent.11 For the drawing of the contest between Apollo and Marsyas [fig. 5]12 Schiavones starting point was, as with Parnassus, a chiaroscuro woodcut of Ugo da Carpi (ca. 15021532) which was, in turn, a variation on a drawing by Parmigianino (15031540), now at the Pierpont Morgan Library [fig. 6].13 Although it was a double copy, Schiavone brought emotion and expression to the drawing. It would be wrong to deny a certain emotional power to Parmigianinos drawing, but it appears neutral and distanced compared to Schiavones. In the latter, one can almost recognize the moment when Apollo bowed his last stroke on his viola. While Parmigianinos Marsyas seems confused, Schiavones is a contemplative wise man. Having completed his performance, Apollo has a questioning look expecting Marsyass judgment while contemplative and critical Marsyas seems to be approving his performance. This is a contest between equals. There is no outside judge present in the picture who could cast an opinion of those who are truly great. Would it matter who is seen a better musician if both are genuine artists? After all there has always been doubts whether this agon was really won by the better musician. Schiavone returned to Parmigianinos Marsyas series one more time. In the Windsor Royal Collection [fig. 7, R.208], there is his incompletely preserved copy of Parmigianinos flaying from the same Marsyas series. Parmigianinos original has been lost but, on the basis of Antonio Fantuzzis etching after the same drawing [fig. 8] which includes a syrinx on the ground below Marsyass head and a lyre next to Apollo one can make a guess what instruments might have been depicted on the model and where. However, one has to be cautious here about making quick assumptions, because the etched copy of Parmigianinos contest (the other drawing from the series), shows that Fantuzzi added to his composition a lyre on the side of Apollo and a tambourine near Marsyas, which do not appear in Parmigianinos original.14 Schiavones drawing has no instruments present. Apollo is identified only by the bow and quiver, his rare identifiers in the context of the contest with Marsyas. Still, it would be too risky to argue that Schiavone used such an identification of Apollo with a certain idea in mind as, we will show later, was possibly the case with his Louvre Marsyas [fig. 11], where several elements introduced from outside the canon might have their raison dtre in the contemporaneous social situation and purposely excluded the instruments. Schiavones Judgment of Midas from 154850, is his largest known mythological painting [fig. 9].15 The number of participants is widened here to all of the protagonists of the event but, again, Schiavone is showing a single moment of the story, frozen in time. The narrative is transformed into a polyphony of psychological characterizations of the individuals. The self-centered Apollo is focused on his music and nothing can distract him from it. Marsyas is the only one interacting with Apollo, looking straight at him and seemingly confident that he can play just as well. Midas, sitting in a melancholic pose, is wrapped in his own thoughts; a Tintorettoesque Tmolus is conferring with Pallas Athena. The archetypal Venetian landscape, with its cream-white clouds and blue sky combined with strong shadows, appears almost pastoral, and in some of its elements borders on an impressionistically conveyed ambiance.16 In both of these scenes the competition between Marsyas and Apollo and the Judgement of Midas Apollos instrument was brought up to date and his ancient lyre was replaced with the viola da braccio. The instrument has a somehow elongated shape a long neck and a short, small rounded body which was totally consistent with his artistic style. Schiavones interest in the accuracy of the form was secondary. He favored elongated forms, and often distorted his figures in accordance with his overriding ideal of rhythmic grace. One need not go further than to look for such elongated figures on his drawing of the Flaying of Marsyas [fig. 11]. On the other hand, Marsyas is holding his ancient syrinx, and in this respect Schiavone followed the mythological story, not replacing the syrinx with some contemporary wind

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Zdravko Blaekovi, Andrea Schiavones Symbolism of Musical Instruments

5. Andrea Schiavone, Apollo and Marsyas. Pen, brown ink, brown wash, white heightening on blue-grey-green prepared paper, 27,3 26,4 cm. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Janos Scholz collection.

instrument as, for example, Tintoretto did in his Judgment of Marsyas changing it to a shwam (Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford). In looking through the cinquecento Marsyas compositions, giving Apollo a contemporary viola or lira da braccio appears to be a common feature and only a few artists gave him the ancient lyre. As Winternitz demonstrated, the lira da braccio was used since the Renaissance for the accompaniment of singing or recitation and it was often considered to be of ancient origin; therefore, the ancient lyre and the lira da braccio became interchangeable.17 With Marsyass instrument the situation was different. His instrument in antiquity was the aulos, either with two reeds or the single flute. In modern iconography he is normally shown with the syrinx. In this way, the sophistication of Apollo was underscored by the contemporaneous instrument used by distinguished courtly Italian poet-musicians to accompany their improvised recitations of lyric or narrative poetry, in contrast with Marsyass syrinx, seen as a rural instrument which probably no one in Venice played at the time. 36

Music in Art XXVI/1-2 (2001)

6. Il Parmigianino, The contest of Apollo and Marsyas. Pen, ink, and wash with heightening, on light brown paper. New York, The Pierpont Morgan Library, no. IV,44.

As was mentioned earlier, the organologically accurate shape of musical instruments or, for that matter, of any other depicted object, was not Schiavones concern. In the drawing, Marsyass syrinx is shown only with an outline; without knowing Parmigianinos or Carpis models, one might even miss it. For Schiavone, instruments had primarily symbolic significance, often being nothing more than a descriptor or an identifier of the person holding it, such as in the case of two of his etchings of Apollo and Daphne (R.101 [fig. 10] and R.125). Apollo here holds his right hand upon a standing lyre, with his left hand stretching toward Daphne. The lyre is highly stylized and shown only as an outline. In the myth of Daphne, the instrument has no musical significance and it is placed here exclusively as an identifier helping one to recognize Apollo. In the third etching of this subject (R.100), Schiavone used the bow and quiver as Apollos identifiers, or on the etching of Mercury (R.71), the god was identified by his caduceus and a turtle, which became his symbol after he invented the lyre. 37

Zdravko Blaekovi, Andrea Schiavones Symbolism of Musical Instruments

7. Andrea Schiavone, Apollo overseeing the flaying of Marsyas. Fragment of a composition. After a lost drawing by Parmigianino. Point of brush, wash, over chalk. Windsor, Royal Library. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

In considering such a distinctly symbolic function of the depicted elements and the way Schiavone organized them in his compositions, it is particularly interesting to see the way he had imagined the end of the Marsyas story in the drawing at the Louvre (R.146; fig. 11).18 This work has special significance because it was, together with St. John the Baptist and Others (R.147), once included in Libro dedisegni, a collection in which Giorgio Vasari (15111574) assembled works by his predecessors and contemporaries. Vasari affixed the drawings to mounts which he then decorated with quasi-architectural drawn frames. It appears that Vasari was personally acquainted with Schiavone and, in 1540, commissioned from him a large canvas showing the battle, fought a short time earlier, between Charles V and Barbarossa. In Vasaris Vita, Schiavone did not get a full-scale biography but only (in the second edition of the work) a 38

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8. Antonio Fantuzzi after Parmigianino, Apollo overseeing the flaying of Marsyas. Etching (ca. 1545). Paris, Bibliothque Nationale de France.

paragraph at the end of Battista Francos biography, where Vasari said of him: A good painter in our own day, in that city [Venice], has been Andrea Schiavone; I say good, because at times, for all his misfortunes, he has produced some good work, and because he has always imitated as well as he has been able the manners of the good masters.19 We will probably never know whether Schiavone produced this drawing specifically for Vasaris Libro or, whether when Vasari asked him for a piece of art, he gave him something already existing. In either case, its inclusion in Vasaris anthology makes it especially relevant, in addition to the fact that this drawing is Schiavones original composition of Marsyas story rather than a copy of another artists work. As we mentioned earlier, the contest between Apollo and Marsyas was a frequent cinquecento motif, but it appears that the flaying itself has usually been reserved for drawings and prints. S.J. Freedberg went as far as to say that among easel pictures ... the flaying scene is almost never shown, as if it made too strong violation of decorum.20 It is hard to say whether or not Schiavone had this in mind, choosing to render this subject as a drawing, but this composition is more violent than most of the contemporaneous works of this subject and, in some of its aspects, even created a precedent. There are only a few earlier images showing Marsyas hanging head-downward, possibly the earliest being Giulio Romanos narrative about Marsyas on the frieze in the Sala dei Metamorfosi at the Palazzo del Te in Mantua (1527), which Titian used as a starting point for his well-known oil composition from the 1570s.21 The principal influence for Schiavone, however, came from Parmigianinos afore mentioned Marsyas series and possibly also his red-chalk drawing Apollo Overseeing the Flaying of Marsyas at the Uffizi (ca. 152730; fig. 12). With Marsyas hanging in the head-down position, the composition takes on a new quality and almost projects his identification with an animal. In Parmigianinos sketchy (and possibly unfinished) Uffizi drawing, Marsyas is hanging in a position somewhat unnatural for an environment ruled by the laws of gravity, appearing as if he was initially meant to be shown on his feet and only later rotated. This is not the case with Schiavones Marsyas, who is firmly tied to the olive tree and lifelessly hanging on the mercy of Apollo. As was demonstrated above, Schiavone had an artistic dialogue with Parmigianino concerning Marsyas at least two other times, and it is logical that at some point he attempted to create his own original composition of this motif. In this composition, he departed from Parmigianino in three significant elements: his Marsyas has a fully human body rather than being goat-legged; in his doomed contest he obviously did not play a syrinx (as Parmigianinos series suggest) or an aulos, but bagpipe which is left on the ground together with Apollos lyre; and, on the far right, is included Pallas 39

Zdravko Blaekovi, Andrea Schiavones Symbolism of Musical Instruments

9. Andrea Schiavone, Judgment of Midas. Oil on canvas, 165 195 cm. Hampton Court Palace, Royal Collection, no.175. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

Athena usually a constituent part of the Judgment of Midas, but not the flaying scenes standing and holding her spear. There is nothing in this drawing pointing to the fiction or the mythological context of the story, nothing indicating that this could not be a depiction of a contemporary event. The image is distanced from the viewer only by its incomprehensible brutality, not by the unreality projected by an imaginary goat-footed martyr. In the years since Schiavone left Dalmatia in search of a more inspiring artistic environment, the Ottomans appeared often on the Croatian Adriatic shores: in 1512 they were near Skradin, in 1513 near Imotski, in 1514 they attacked Knin, Skradin, and Karin and in 1522 finally took over those cities; in 1524 Petar Krui defended Klis and in 1525 Senj; in 1532 he even liberated Solin, but in 1537 Klis was lost to the Ottomans and Krui died in the battle. Andrea Schiavone left in Zadar his younger brother Marco Antonio, also a painter, and his father Simon. Although there are no documents preserved indicating his contact with them, it is known that Andreas wife Marina de Ricis, in her will, bequeathed to her second husband the properties in Zara left to me by my husband, Messer Andrea Schiavon, which would indicate that Schiavone kept an estate in Zadar during all his years in Venice.22 Even without the family connections, it is certain that the news of the Ottoman attacks and cruelties committed by the Sultans troops in his homeland were buzzing among the Schiavoni anchoring their boats at the Riva degli Schiavoni. As Winternitz pointed out, the bagpipes are extremely rare in Renaissance illustrations of the Marsyas story and he was able to list only three works with them: the woodcut of the ia master included in the first Italian version of

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10. Andrea Schiavone, Apollo and Daphne, etching.

Ovids Metamorphoses volgare (Venice: Lucantonio Giunta, 1497), Benedetto Montagnas series of woodcuts showing the contest (ca. 151520), and in the painting attributed to Michelangelo Anselmi at the National Gallery in Washington (152550), which is a narrative deriving from the woodcuts of the master ia.23 Now we can add to this list the engraving attributed to Girolamo Fagiuoli, reproducing a lost design by Francesco Salviati (1539),24 Domenico Zagas ceiling fresco, commissioned by Paul III Farnese for the Sala di Apollo at the Castel SantAngelo in Rome and executed after a design by Perino del Vaga (1540s), and a relief on the logetta of San Marco in Venice (1540 45), attributed to Girolamo Lombardo.25 We also know now that all of these works descend from the woodcuts of Ovidio volgare, and hence it is logical that they follow the model in which Marsyas appears with the bagpipe. Although Schiavone was most possibly familiar with this iconographical tradition and some of these works, his Louvre drawing does not fit into the Ovidio volgare iconographic tradition, and the origin of Marsyass bagpipe points in a different direction. Knowing from his other works how Schiavone used instruments as identifiers for the depicted figures, the question is whether or not the bagpipe is here a clue for the reading of this entire composition, transforming the flaying of Marsyas into an iconographical metaphor for the contemporaneous Ottoman attacks on the other side of the Adriatic. As was Marsyass syrinx a symbol of rural and pastoral life rather than an instrument from the Venetian urban environment the minice was an instrument specific to the peasants of the Dalmatian hinterland, who were at the time those most exposed to the Ottoman assaults. The pastoral ambience from his Judgment of Midas painting is no longer present here. The cruelties of the Ottomans were not fiction but real events and therefore Schiavones suffering Marsyas became a real person rather than a goat-footed Phrygian satyr. He could be from Schiavones old homeland or from anyplace afflicted by brutality. Athena, who usually sits silently in the Judgment of Midas scenes and is normally not a participant of the flaying, in Schiavones drawing, is standing to one side and, despite having her shield and spear with her, does not attempt to protect the suffering man. While the Ottomans were approaching the Croatian lands, the more powerful European armies waited for the military outcome on the Croatian battlefields on the sidelines.26 41

Zdravko Blaekovi, Andrea Schiavones Symbolism of Musical Instruments

11. Andrea Schiavone, The execution of Marsyas (bottom), red chalk, 25 24 cm; St. John the Baptist and others (top), pen and dark brown ink, dark brown wash, white heightening on light blue-green prepared paper. The composition once belonged to Vasaris Libro de disegni. Paris, Muse du Louvre, Dpartment des Arts Graphiques, no. 5452.

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12. Il Parmigianino, Apollo overseeing the flaying of Marsyas. Red chalk, partly outlined in pen and ink. Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi.

Quite possibly, Schiavone was not the only north-Italian cinquecento painter who might have seen Marsyas as a metaphor for Christians tortured by the Infidels. In the 1530s, north Italian representations of Marsyas began to deal with the myth in new terms. The dominant factor in its artistic designs became the narrative and, at the same time, the designs inherited from ancient models faded away. The imagery became more realistic, but also more violent. In her extensive study of the iconographical tradition of the myth of Apollo and Marsyas in the Italian Renaissance, Edith Wyss demonstrated that several images from the third quarter of the sixteenth century insist on Apollos vengeance, such as the two drawings by the Genoese Luca Cambiaso (ca. 155565), two drawings by the Veronese Paolo Farinati (1570s or 1580s), and a drawing by Lelio Orsi the court painter in Novellara.27 She argues that the vigor, not to say viciousness, with which the god rips and tears the skin off his victim appears irreconcilable with the ideology of harmony that for so long had been associated with the myth. ... The images in which Marsyas appears as human are especially disturbing.28 The diagonals which are so prominent in these compositions convey the impression of violence even more. In observing this, Wyss does not offer any explanation for the expression of such brutality: On the basis of the present knowledge about the discussed drawings and paintings she continues it is impossible to define the specific motivation for the violent conception of Apollo. A political intention is not known for these images. It is difficult to believe that the defense of high, learned art against ineptitude should have sanctioned such cruelty.29 Although the political agenda or ideology of the patrons who might have commissioned those works is not known, one can see them along the same lines as Schiavones Marsyas. The concern about the Ottoman threat was universal, and the news about their cruelties in the conquered lands were everyday reality. It would be hard to imagine that the psychosis caused by the proximity of the enemy troops played no role in the selection of artistic motifs, at least on a subconscious level. Let us not forget that only after the Holy League defeated the Ottoman fleet in the battle of Lepanto, on 7 October 1571 did the naval balance in the Mediterranean change in favor of the Christians. And even then, although the immediate danger to the Mediterranean coastal towns ceased, the Ottoman menace was still present in the not so distant continental lands.

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13. Attributed to Peter Paul Rubens, Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew. Drawing. New York, The Pierpont Morgan Library, no. I,241.

When the Ottomans took over Cyprus on 1 August 1571, just about two months before the battle at Lepanto, the commander of the Ottoman troops Lala Mustafa Pasha ordered the commander of the Venetian army Marcantonio Bragadin to be flayed alive in the main square of Famagusta. First he was dragged around the walls, with sacks of earth and stones on his back, then tied onto a chair and hoisted to the yardarm of the Turkish flagship where he was exposed to the mockery of the sailors, and finally was taken to the place of execution in the main square, tied naked to a column, and literally, flayed alive.30 Supposedly, this event, when the news of it arrived in Venice, inspired Titians vision of the suffering Marsyas. This composition was Titians very private meditation on the meaning of the martyrdom, agony, and death, in a painting which, most probably, had not been commissioned or intended for immediate sale. To paraphrase Winternitz again, it appears that the half-man half-god has become an image of the silently suffering creature, clearly the prototype of the crucified.31 In more particular terms, one might see Marsyas as an iconographic metaphor for all Schiavoni suffering along the Dalmatian hinterland, as well as for all Christians martyred in the Ottoman persecutions. 44

Music in Art XXVI/1-2 (2001) A subject parallel to the flaying of Marsyas in the Christian iconography is the martyrdom of St. Bartholomew and one might pose the question as to why this image, rather than that of Marsyas, had not become such a powerful metaphor; as a matter of fact, the flaying of St. Bartholomew has been a relatively rare iconographical motif. Bartholomew, one of the twelve original disciples, was associated with the spreading of the gospel in Lycaonia, India, and Armenia, where he is said to have been martyred by being flayed alive and then, according to some hagiographies, crucified. Although there is no historical certainty about any of this, his emblem remained a butchers knife, and this is how Schiavone too represented him in his two series of the twelve apostles. However, there are three other iconographic traditions of his representations showing him either being flayed, as a skinless man standing with his musculature revealed (the sculpture on the Milan Duomo), or carrying his skin in one hand or over his shoulder. While many compositions of Marsyass and Bartholomews flaying could almost be interchangeable, Marsyas was never able to stand up with his skinless body and show the stripped skin. Compositions such as, for example, Michelangelos St. Bartholomew included among the saints enjoying a heavenly blessing in his Last Judgment at the Sistina, or an anonymous fifteenth-century illumination in the Glagolitic missal MS 162 of the Narodna in Univerzitetna Knjinica, Ljubljana32 cannot be misread and confused with Marsyas. On the other hand, the drawing of St. Bartholomews martyrdom attributed to Rubens [fig. 13],33 could easily be confused with the flaying of Marsyas, up to the point that in the background, behind the bloodthirsty pagans, one can recognize a statue of a god holding a lyre. The two iconographic motifs Marsyas and St. Bartholomew have one crucial difference in their metaphorical meaning and in their iconographical reception. Sinful man can only look up to a saint, but never achieve his perfection or endure pain equal to his martyrdom. On the other hand, the universal quality of the mythological story, its primordial origin and timelessness made it possible to turn it into a metaphor. In his entire opus, Schiavone approached exclusively musical subjects only on rare occasions. With his many renderings of the Apollo stories, musical instruments were symbols included in the composition with the purpose of identifying the protagonists or of projecting the metaphoric contents of the composition. On many other occasions, even when musicians were elementary to the canon, he dropped them from his composition. Of all his nativity scenes or adorations of the Magi, only one includes a shepherd playing the shawm. This etching is produced however with a great clarity and richness (R.6) and this is Schiavones most clearly rendered instrument. In his other few compositions with musicians, instruments are sketched with a single line without details34 or, on rare occasions, they are included to supply ambience to the depicted motif.35 Schiavone had never considered instruments to be a part of a decorum, and when he included a musician or his instrument in the background of the composition, it was always an important element in the narrative. His interest was the representation of the storys substance, without adding elements insignificant to the depicted event. The content of his nativity scenes, landscapes, and even mythological motifs are done with a realistic approach, and instruments are used when needed as identifiers of the motif or a person. When the narrative of the composition did not call for the instrument, Schiavone generally did not include it. Uncovering this pattern and knowing the social psychoses present in a large part of the Mediterranean during his lifetime, it is hard not to associate Marsyass bagpipes with the minice specific to the Dalmatian hinterlands. The Marsyas compositions, which were so prominent in Schiavones artistic opus either as reworkings of other painters or as his original compositions appear as his very personal commentary to the contemporary social and political situation in his old homeland.

Notes
1 The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Katharine Baetjer, European Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995) and the Royal Collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, put his birthdate as late as 1522. 2 For example, the Judgment of Midas which has been reattributed to Bonifazio Veronese (Accademia in Venice), or six cassoni, showing biblical stories, now credited to Tintoretto (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). 3 The cassone is at the Galerija Umjetnina in Split, and reproduced in color in Kruno Prijatelj, Andrija Meduli Schiavone (Zagreb: Jugoslavenska Akademija Znanosti i Umjetnosti, 1952). The painting has not been included in Richardsons catalogue of Schiavones works. Although Prijateljs study is listed in the bibliography of the catalogue, there is no reference in it to any of the paintings from the Zagreb and Belgrade collections, which Prijatelj listed in his article. Cf. Francis L.

Richardson, Andrea Schiavone (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980). The Orpheus cassone was also reproduced in Duko Kekemets entry about Meduli in the Enciklopedija likovnih umjetnosti (Zagreb: Jugoslavenski leksikografski zavod, 1964), vol. III, 433-434. 4 Cf. F. Richardson, op. cit., 45. 5 The panel (29,5 70,2 cm) is at the Bayerische Staatsgemldesammlungen, Munich, no. 40. The painting Il concerto, with an equally large selection of instruments, which Adolfo Venturi attributed to Schiavone and reproduced in his essay Andrea Meldolla detto lo Schiavone (Archivio storico per la Dalmazia VII/37, 1928, fig. 30), currently hangs at the Museo di Castelvecchio in Verona with the title Contesa tra le Muse e le Pieridi (inv.1562-1B102), was reattributed in 1832 by Berenson to Jacopo Tintoretto. 6 For example, Schiavones contemporary Giulio Sanuto included Raimondis group of Muses albeit without Apollo to fill the space in the middle section of his 1562 engraving of the narrative about Apollo

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Zdravko Blaekovi, Andrea Schiavones Symbolism of Musical Instruments

and Marsyas which is, in turn, a free reworking of the painting attributed to Bronzino (St. Petersburg, the Hermitage). 7 For a detailed description of the frescos content cf. George L. Hersey, High Renaissance Art in St. Peters and the Vatican (Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 1993) 138-141; and Walter Salmen, Raffael und die Musik, Freiburger Universittsbltter 136 (June 1997) 43-56. 8 Oil on a panel, 30 32,4 cm. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, GG 1986. 9 Cf. Emanuel Winternitz, The Curse of Pallas Athena, Studies in the History of Art (1959) 187. 10 The most famous among them were Cima da Conegliano (who approached the subject twice), Paris Bordone, Jacopo Tintoretto (who returned to it at least three times), Bonifazio Veronese, Titian, and Andrea Vicentino. Cf. also Ulrike Groos, Ars musica in Venedig im 16. Jahrhundert (Hildesheim: Olms, 1996). 11 Three paintings of the Judgment of Midas, once attributed to Schiavone, recent research has reattributed: the painting at the Paul Drey Galleries in New York (Richardson, D.359) is now attributed to Sterano Cernoto; the painting at the Venice Accademia (D.370) to Bonifazio Veronese; and the cassone formerly at the Loeser Collection, Florence (D.347), to Lambert Sustris. 12 Apollo and Marsyas (R.187), pen, brown ink, brown wash, white heightening on blue-grey-green prepared paper, 27,3 26,4 cm. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection of Janos Scholz. 13 This Parmigianino drawing is a fragment of an eight-part series, produced in Bologna between the summer of 1527 and 1530/31, presenting the key elements of the story: Mercury assembling the syrinx, Mercury handing the syrinx to Minerva, Minerva playing the instrument, Minerva casting away the syrinx, Marsyas finding the pipes, the contest of Apollo and Marsyas, the grieving witness of the execution, and Apollo overseeing the flaying of Marsyas. It is known that Schiavone copied at least two fragments: the contest [fig. 5] and the flaying [fig. 7]. 14 Cf. Edith Wyss, The Myth of Apollo and Marsyas in the Art of the Italian Renaissance: An Inquiry into the Meaning of Images (Newark: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1996) fig. 79. 15 The Judgment of Midas (R.263), oil on canvas, 165 195 cm. Hampton Court Palace, Royal Collection, no. 175. 16 This painting had always a prominent place in Schiavones opus. In 1712 Simon Gribelin (16611733), the French engraver active in England, issued a series of six engravings among which was also included Schiavones Judgment of Midas: Six of Her Majestys Pictures, Drawn and Engravd from the Originals of Paolo Veronese, Jac. Tintoreto, Old Palma, Jul. Romano, and Andr. Schiavone; in the Royal Galleries of Windsor and Kensington: are most Humbly Dedicated to Her Most Excellent and Sacred Majesty Anne (By the Grace of God), Queen of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith &c., By Her Majestys Most Humble and Faithful Subject, Sim. Gribelin and Sold by Him. 1712. Gribelin was a significant engraver in London at the time, who five years earlier produced for the first time engravings of Raphael's cartoons, then on display at Hampton Court. His designs had a significant influence on the development of printmaking in England and were still being reprinted in the 1750s. 17 Cf. E. Winternitz, op. cit., 189.
18 The Flaying of Marsyas, red chalk (25 24 cm). Paris, Muse du Louvre, Dpartment des Arts Graphiques, no. 5452. 19 Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, trans. by Gaston du C. de Vere (London: Everymans Library, 1996) II:515. 20 Sydney J. Freedberg, Titian and Marsyas, FMR 4 (1984) 56. 21 Six preparatory modelli are preserved at the Albertina (one) and the Louvre, Cabinet des Dessins (five). Cf. E. Wyss, op. cit. 96-98; and S.J. Freeberg, op. cit., 62. 22 Cf. F. Richardson, op. cit., 12. 23 E. Winternitz, op. cit., 188. All three works are reproduced in this Winternitzs essay. 24 One print is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection. 25 All works are reproduced in E. Wyss, op. cit., figs. 55 and 5657. 26 Two more known works representing Marsyas are attributed to Schiavone: the cassone at the Castello Sforzesco in Milan representing the flaying (inv.no.1080; 32 62,5 cm), which Richardson included neither in the catalogue of the positively identified works, nor among the deattributed works; and a painting sold at a Sothebys auction in London (11 October 1972). The Milan painting is traditional in its composition, showing Marsyas lying on the ground, with his right hand tied to a tree, and Apollo just beginning his gory work from the right foot. His syrinx is left in the middle of the composition and Apollos lira in the corner. The whereabouts of the painting sold at Sotheby's (R.338) is unknown, and the auction catalogue does not include its reproduction. Cf. Catalogue of Old Master Paintings (London: Sothebys) lot 87. A further unidentified painting of this subject by Schiavone was also presented to King Louis XIII of France. Cf. Hans Tietze and Erica Tietze-Conrat, The Drawings of the Venetian Painters in the 15th and 16th Centuries (New York: Collectors Editions, 1970) 252. 27 All works reproduced in E. Wyss, ibid., 120-127. 28 E. Wyss, ibid., 123. 29 E. Wyss, ibid., 124. 30 Cf. S.J. Freedberg, op. cit., 63. 31 E. Winternitz, op. cit., 187. 32 A facsimile of the page with this simple, although expressive, image is included in Anelko Badurina, Illuminated Manuscripts in Croatia (Zagreb: Kranska Sadanjost, 1995) 84. 33 New York, The Pierpont Morgan Library, inv.no. I,241. 34 The trumpets in the drawing Worship of the Golden Calf (R. 161) at the Collection of the Duke of Devonshire, Chatsworth, and one straight trumpet in the design for the embroidery Allegorical Coronation of Doge Grimani (R.175), at the British Museum. 35 The woman playing cymbals on the etching of the Bacchic Revel (R.123), or the two musicians playing shawms on the painting of Giuditta ed Oloferno a Banchetto (Castello Sforzesco, inv.no. 42, not in the Richardson catalogue). The two drawings attributed to Schiavone at the Museon of Bassano del Grappa, which Richardson lists as dancing or flying figures (R.153) are very free sketches and some figures can just as well be studies for angels rather than dancers.

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