If Music Be the Food of Art

“The Musicians,” 1597, by Caravaggio. Oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. Public Domain

William Shakespeare wrote famously, “If music be the food of love, play on.” That same sentiment could be applied to music as fuel and inspiration for fine art.

Music has been a muse for artists since antiquity, with musicians and singers depicted as raconteurs, as divinities, and in myths. Examining a selection of historical artworks through a lens of music affords a unique understanding and appreciation of music and artistic periods.

The Cycladic Harpist

Marble seated harp player, 2800–2700 B.C., Cycladic. Marble. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. Public Domain

The Cycladic artwork “Marble seated harp player” is from the third millennium B.C. It is purported to have been found on the present-day Greek island of Naxos, which is historically renowned for the quality of its marble. This sculpture is one of the earliest known representations of a musician. Originally, the marble artwork was painted with embellishments. Scientific analysis has revealed that marble sculptures of the Cycladic period were usually painted with mineral-based pigments, such as cinnabar (red) and azurite (blue).

The work shows a male figure seated on a high-backed chair playing a stringed, harp-like instrument. The harp is one of the oldest musical instruments in the world, with the earliest surviving example dating to about 2600 B.C. The careful modeling of the harp player’s muscled arms and articulated fingers impresses upon the viewer his power as a musician. His right thumb is depicted in a raised position, which suggests that he is sounding a note. The musician appears to be singing while he accompanies himself, with his head tilted back and his lips drawn forward.

This engaging sculpture recalls the age of Homer, when, before writing, epic poems were composed and transmitted orally to accompanying music. This oral tradition served to preserve the mythic past. However, this sculpture was made an astonishing 20 centuries before Homer, which reinforces the longstanding and epic importance of the role of music in society. Perhaps, as The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s online audio postulates, “this harp player also taught wisdom and history to his people, singing to them during long evenings while they sat around him.”

Choir of Angels

“Ghent Altarpiece,” 1432, Hubert and Jan van Eyck. Oil on wood. Saint Bavo’s Cathedral, Ghent, Belgium. Public Domain

In the 1400s, much of the art being produced in Europe was still in a medieval style. A group of Flemish artists was transitioning into the Renaissance and creating artworks with detailed realism, new and advanced artistic techniques, and complex symbolism. One of these Early Northern Renaissance painters was Jan van Eyck.

While scholars no longer consider van Eyck to be the inventor of oil painting, he did use and manipulate the medium to singular and spectacular effect. This can be seen in his monumental masterpiece “Ghent Altarpiece,” commissioned for Saint Bavo’s Cathedral in Ghent and still housed there today, despite centuries of plunder, theft, and near destruction.

This iconic first major oil painting in art history is rich with Catholic iconography and meticulous details. The altarpiece showcases exceptional artistic features and techniques, including the realistic depiction of contemporaneous fabrics, simulated faux stone and wood carvings, atmospheric perspective, and as many as 75 types of identifiable flowers, trees, and fruits ripe with Christian symbolism.

Two upper panels of the “Ghent Altarpiece” illustrate angels engaged in musical activity representing heavenly music. On the left, angels stand around an embellished lectern that holds an open manuscript. The few notes depicted are written in mensural notation, which is characteristic of polyphonic music (the simultaneous combination of two or more equally prominent melodic lines played at the same time). This type of music, with its otherworldly, transcendent sound, was popular in van Eyck’s day. While experts cannot identify the exact piece of music the angels are singing, they can discern each angel’s vocal pitch from the carefully modulated facial expressions and mouth positions.

Detail of angels in left and right panels from “Ghent Altarpiece,” 1432, Hubert and Jan van Eyck. Saint Bavo’s Cathedral, Ghent, Belgium. Public Domain

On the right-side panel, forming an accompaniment to the singing angels, is a second group of angels playing instruments. The viewer can just make out an angel operating the organ’s bellows. The organ, which dominates this panel, originated in antiquity and was used originally for secular music, becoming an important church instrument during the Middle Ages. The harp, also depicted in this panel, was popular in this era and was associated with the courtly love tales of troubadours (composers and performers of lyric poetry).

The harp in “Ghent Altarpiece” is so realistically portrayed that the viewer can differentiate between the instrument’s thick and thin strings, which produce differing tones. Indeed, the artist paints the instruments so realistically that researchers can identify from what kind of wood they were made. Since few physical musical instruments from the time of van Eyck survive, paintings such as “Ghent Altarpiece” are an invaluable resource.

Caravaggio’s Musicians

“The Musicians,” 1597, by Caravaggio. Oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. Public Domain

A painter inspired by earlier Flemish artists’ mastery of oil paint was the undisputed genius of Southern Baroque (Italy and Spain) painting, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.

Caravaggio is one of the most influential artists in history. His dynamic early painting “The Musicians” uses a depiction of the mythic winged Cupid plucking grapes to establish the painting as an allegory of music and love. The artist combines this framework with contemporary influences, including late 16th-century musical performance styles and a self-portrait (second youth from the right). The art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon discusses in his artist biography, “Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane,” that this work is innovative because for the first time in art, an artist depicts preparations for a concert instead of an actual performance. Thus, this painting does not conform to archetypal 16th-century musical or Venetian-style pastoral paintings.

The inspiration for this complex and ambiguous half-length, tightly compressed scene likely came from Caravaggio’s patron Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte. Cardinal del Monte was an active music and fine art supporter interested in new styles. He commissioned “The Musicians,” which hung in a room in his Roman palazzo used specifically for private concerts.

This painting embodies the marked shift away from medieval polyphony, as performed by the angels in “Ghent Altarpiece,” to a 16th-century-and-beyond revival of the classical antiquity monodic style (a single vocal part). Mr. Graham-Dixon explains that the upcoming concert in “The Musicians” would feature a single voice accompanied by instruments, one being the prominently featured lute.

Jayson Kerr Dobney, curator in charge of The Met’s Department of Musical Instruments, explained that the lute was at one time the most popular instrument in medieval Europe. “Originally, the lute was played by plucking the strings with a plectrum, but in the fifteenth century, lute players began using their fingers,” Mr. Kerr Dobney wrote. This technique, which can be seen in Caravaggio’s painting, allowed musicians to play more intricate music.

A Song of Love

“The Love Song,” 1868-1877, by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. Oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. Public Domain

The 19th-century Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of British artists who sought to emulate the style of European artists before the time of Raphael. Their artworks, with exquisite detail and decorative beauty, frequently depict subjects from literature and poetry, often with a focus on the theme of love.

Sir Edward Burne-Jones, a member of the group, was especially inspired by medieval art, myths, and religion. His painting “The Love Song,” a theme and composition which he explored multiple times over the course of 15 years, depicts a scene of music-making and was inspired by an old French song with the lyrics “Alas, I know a love song, / Sad or happy, each in turn.”

In contrast to Caravaggio’s “The Musicians,” Burne-Jones emulates richly colored and sensual Venetian Renaissance pastoral scenes in “The Love Song.” Curator Emerita Katharine Baetjer, in The Met’s online audio, explains that the composition of this painting, with three figures in the foreground, is reminiscent of a medieval stained-glass window. 

In front of this trio lies a border of flowers representative of bitterness and love. The lovesick knight, perhaps a surrogate for Burne-Jones, is seated on the left. A pipe-organ-playing maiden seems oblivious to her admirer. Once again, the inclusion of Cupid, who in this artwork wears a medley of antique drapery and a sling of unused arrows as he squeezes the organ’s bellows, represents the allegorical connection between music and love.

One can enjoy how beautiful and significant each of these four artworks is separate from their music components. However, identifying a bit of the musical context can attune one to a richer experience of the art.