music in venice: a historiographical overview 881
A much more widespread approach is to see music in an allegorical
role, although there is little agreement about interpretation. two groups
of paintings have attracted particular attention: giorgione’s Concert
champetre and similar works, and titian’s several canvases of Venus with
a musician. For Augusto gentili, the nude, recorder-playing woman and
the clothed, lute-playing man embody the Apollonian-Dionysian dichot-
omy found in so much Venetian writing of the period. similarly, elizabeth
Delmont sees the instruments in the titian paintings, especially those in
which Venus holds a recorder, as highlighting the contrast between the
clothed, cultured, male playing the respectable organ or lute, and the
nude, sensual, natural woman playing the erotically tinged wind instru-
ment. Katherine Mciver offers an alternative to the standard interpreta-
tions of the titians as allegories of sight and sound, pointing to the tactile
nature of musical performance and its role as an allegory of erotic touch.
Anthony rowland-Jones examines the depictions of recorders in titian’s
works and notes the difference between the appearance of a single instru-
ment, as in the Venus paintings, where the erotic meaning is clear, and
the showing of two or more instruments, which he identifies as an alle-
gory of harmony. on a rather different tack, Zdravko Blazekovic reads
into depictions of the lira-playing Marsyas in paintings of the croatian
immigrant to Venice Andrea schiavone an allegory of the turkish threat
to the Serenissima.
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