THE “ALLEGORY OF MUSIC” BY FILIPPINO LIPPI. GENEALOGY OF IMAGE

Abstract

The female image presented in the small painting “Allegory of Music” by Filippino Lippi (Gemaeldegalerie, Berlin) is most likely associated with the plot of a theatrical performance played out in 1475 in Pesaro on the occasion of the wedding of Costanzo Sforza and Camilla of Aragon. Th e similarity of the attributes of the heroine with the attributes of the muse Erato, who greeted the newlyweds, was pointed out by A. Warburg, who placed two images, the Filippino board and an illustration from the Vatican manuscript containing the text of the wedding performance, next to each other in his “Mnemosine Atlas”. It is impossible to substantiate this version with documents, but the Florentine artist, who nominally interprets the plot differently from the anonymous northern Italian miniatur-ist, could be familiar with the description of the celebration, known not only from illustrated lists, but also from printed brochures. Th e origins of the “Allegory of Music” are traditionally traced to a wedding commission — on the occasion of the marriage of Giovanni Vespucci and Namicina Nerli in 1500 — which also included paired spalliers depicting “History of Lucretia” and “History of Virginia” by San-dro Botticelli and a panel by Piero di Cosimo displaying bacchanalia. Th e present article advances arguments in favor of this version, building on other episodes of cooperation between Botticelli and Filippino Lippi, both between the two of them and with the two intermarried Florentine families. Th e painting in question contains elements that may indicate its connection with the wedding ritual. It is impossible to establish how all the listed panels were arranged in the interior. How-ever, on the whole, this alleged ensemble, designed in the all’antica style, could be thought of as a glorification of sublime and chaste love. Th e theme, traditional for the decoration of the matrimonial bedroom, is eleborated simultaneously in brutal scenes from Roman history, which in Florentine artistic culture were laden with explicit republican connotations, as well as in small-scale mythological “poetry”, that soft ens political accents and, moreover, can be associated with a magnificent princely wedding, glorifying the nobility of the newlyweds.