Music in one way or another can so often be seen in all forms of architecture, sculpture and paintings throughout western art. Music was an essential part of ecclesiastical, but also secular life, whether, as in the sculpture of Luca della Robbia, as a means of praising God or, as in the work of 17th century Dutch painters, such as Vermeer for example, as a means of celebrating more sensual and earthly emotions. The study day will explore a wide variety of images of music-making in European architecture, sculpture, painting and the decorative arts from early medieval sculpture and manuscripts to the great variety of musicians, instruments, and listeners in the painting of later centuries.  Wonderful examples can be found on church portals, in medieval ivories and manuscript illumination and in the sculpture, tapestries, frescoes and paintings of later centuries. 

The Renaissance saw the increasing development of sacred polyphony and secular song, such as madrigals and representations of music-making occur in increasingly varied contexts from the sacred as in Van Eyck’s Ghent altarpiece to the more secular depictions in the work of Bosch or Pieter Bruegel the Elder. 

The seventeenth century saw fascinating variations in a wider social context from Caravaggio and Artemisia Gentileschi to Jan Steen and Vermeer.  The fêtes champêtres of Watteau introduce a new subject, popular in the 18th century for example, and in the 19th century, music-making spread throughout the social classes from the Biedermeier family gatherings early in the century to the paintings of Renoir, Degas or Whistler, whose musical titles of his paintings symbolise the mood characterised by Whistler’s use of the subtle painterly tones in his landscapes.

LECTURE 1:   From Sacred to Secular in Medieval and Renaissance Sculpture, Painting, Tapestry and Manuscript Illumination.

LECTURE 2:      Love and Devotion in 17th and Early 18th Century Painting and Sculpture.

LECTURE 3:      Music Playing, Performing and Pleasure in 19th Century Art.