Gian Paolo Lomazzo (Libro de Sogni, 1564) describing the genius of Sofonisba Anguisola in the context of an imagined conversation between Leonardo da Vinci, representing modern painting, and Phidias, the artist from Antiquity.

Anguisola, Bernardino Campi Painting Sofonisba Anguissola, c. 1550

The image we’ve chosen to represent the upcoming Magnificat program featuring music by four women from the 17th century was painted by the extraordinary Sofonisba Anguissola in 1550. An exceptional work that captures the place of women in late Renaissance, the painting is both a self portrait, a portrait of her master teacher, and a compelling allegory of women as defined by men of the period. It aptly symbolizes the barriers to artistic expression faced by women and the fruits of the individual struggle in the face of those barriers.

Anguissola was born in Cremona around 1532, the oldest of seven children, six of whom were daughters. Her father, Amilcare Anguissola, was a member of the Genoese minor nobility and her mother, Bianca Ponzone, was also of an affluent family of noble background. At fourteen, Anguissola started studying with Bernardino Campi, at the Lombard school and later on under Bernardino Gatti. It is clear that her privileged status as a noble woman were a contributing factor to the fact that she had been given an opportunity to become an artist. Read more at Suite101

Although Sofonisba enjoyed much more encouragement and support than the average woman of her day, her social class did not allow her to transcend the constraints of her sex. Without the possibility of studying anatomy or drawing from life (it was considered unacceptable for a lady to view nudes), she could not undertake the complex multi-figure compositions required for large-scale religious or history paintings. Instead, Anguissola created wry and witty portraits of family members and acquaintances.

“Sofonisba’s painting of her teacher, painting her portrait – a story within a story – demonstrates how she negotiated her male-dominated world. Anguissola’s gaze rivets the viewer of the painting, forcing consideration of what appears to be the inscribing of male authority on the body of the female. Campi’s gaze complicates matters, however, since as he paints he, too, looks out of the painting toward what the picture indicates must be his subject, Anguissola. Thus the viewer in front of the painting plays a double role: that of the subject of the painting within the painting, namely Anguissola herself, and of an engaged viewer – watched by both Campi and Anguissola – made complicit in Anguissola’s destabilizing of contemporary social norms.” (Read more at wga.hu)

When, in 1673, Marc-Antoine Charpentier became the principal composer to the King’s Troupe (Troupe du Roy), he became involved in the ongoing struggle between the company’s director and chief playwright, Jean-Baptiste Molière, and the composer Jean-Baptiste Lully. Throughout the 1660s, Molière and Lully had worked closely in providing for the king’s entertainment a series of multi-generic experiments that combined theater, ballet, vocal numbers, choruses, and machine effects. But by the spring of 1672 Lully had decided that his own future lay in opera. Having witnessed the successes of Perrin and Cambert with pastoral opera, Lully set about obtaining the royal opera privilege and, thereafter, a series of draconian decrees designed to protect his monopoly and reduce his musical competition.

Molière soon found another musical colleague in Charpentier, recently returned from Rome and his studies with Giacomo Carissimi. The revivals of earlier collaborations with Lully (La Comtesse d’Escarbagnas, Le Mariage forcé) with new music by Charpentier led to a full-scale comedy-ballet, Le Malade imaginaire. This devastating musical satire would be the playwright’s last work—for during its fourth performance Molière, playing the leading role of the hypochondriac Argan, fell ill during the finale and died at his home shortly thereafter. Thereafter, musical life in Parisian theater was a struggle to survive in the face of Lully’s active opposition.

Charpentier continued on as the leading composer the Troupe du Roy after Lully evicted the actors from their theater. On 17 March 1675, the company premiered Circé, the first in a series of new machine-plays given at their new playhouse, the Théâtre de Guénégaud. Struggling to survive after Molière’s death and to justify its existence in the shadow of Lully’s Académie Royale de Musique, the actors deployed all of their scenic, musical, and choreographic resources in this spectacular and expensive production.

Whereas Louis XIV did not come personally to see it, the Gazette reported that on 4 October 1675 the king’s younger brother, together with his wife and their daughter Louise, attended a performance, and that “Their royal highnesses were marvelously satisfied with this fine spectacle, whose stage décor, aerial flights, and machines were extraordinary.”  Pierre Bayle concluded that “if they were permitted to perform with music, dance, and instruments according to their imagination, Circé would highly surpass all the operas performed until now.”

Circé brought together a team of dramatists, musicians, and artists who had wide experience in both court and public theater. The play was by Thomas Corneille, younger brother of Pierre Corneille, who would provide the Théâtre de Guénégaud with a series of machine-plays written in collaboration with Donneau de Visé (Circé, L’Inconnu, La Devineresse, and La Pierre philosophale).  De Visé had collaborated with the rival Théâtre du Marais, for which he had written a trilogy of musical machine-plays (Les Amours de Vénus et d’Adonis, Les Amours du Soleil, and Le Mariage de Bacchus et d’Ariane). He returned to the Troupe du Roy during Molière’s last season, and published favorable reviews of their productions in his newly founded gazette, the Mercure Galant.

Charpentier’s position had been established with the success of his music for Molière’s Le Malade imaginaire. The preface of the libretto for Circé (probably written by de Visé) praised “the delicacy of the music, in which Monsieur Charpentier, who has been already admired for the airs of Le Malade imaginaire, has in some way surpassed himself as much by the gracefulness of the symphony as by the noble manner in which he elevates all the words that are sung.” The ballet master Pierre de La Montagne had danced in court ballets and comédies-ballets throughout the 1660s, and with Circé he succeeded Pierre Beauchamps as maître à danser to the Théâtre de Guénégaud. Alexandre, sieur de Rieux, known as the Marquis de Sourdéac, was the scenic designer for Circé. Sourdéac was a nobleman and an amateur engineer whose hobby was designing stage machinery. He had furnished the sets for Perrin’s and Cambert’s pastoral operas, and when the Troupe du Roy relocated to the Hôtel de Guénégaud (Perrin’s former theater) after Molière’s death, the company entered into a turbulent partnership with Sourdéac and his nefarious cohort, the Sieur de Champeron.

Circé required a large number of singers, dancers, aerial artists, and instrumentalists: 6 strings and harpsichord, 10 “marcheurs” (probably so named to circumvent the 1673 prohibition on dancers), 20 aerial artists (voleurs), and 3 professional singers—which the company combined with their own singing actors.  One of the unusual features of Circé was the presence of acrobats in two numbers of the Finale (the “Chœur des divinitez des forets” and the “Rondeau pour trois figures”). For two productions given in 1674-75 (Corneille’s Le Comédien poète and Molière’s Le Malade imaginaire), the Troupe de Guénégaud had engaged a company of “sauteurs” directed by Charles Alard, the celebrated acrobat of the Théâtre de la Foire; thus it seems likely that Alard choreographed the acrobatic “figures” cued in Charpentier’s score.

Corneille’s mythological play is framed by a prologue and finale, with musical entr’actes articulating the overall dramatic structure.  Acts 1-4 all contain divertissements drawn from traditions common to the pastoral and burlesque ballet:  songs by satyrs, shepherds, shepherdesses, dryads, and fauns, and dance-pantomimes by monkeys and furies.  Moreover, the acts of the play are separated by ballet entr’actes, no doubt performed by the ten “marcheurs” that are listed in the company’s account books.  The play ends with a miniature ballet performed by the divinities of the forests and the seas.

In the Prologue Mars, Fortune, Love, and Fame complain of the honor Louis XIV is receiving.  They are convinced by Glory that it is useless to oppose him, and that they will profit by doing his bidding.  After three spoken scenes featuring Mars, Fortune, Fame, Cupid, and Glory, the Pleasures and the Liberal and Mechanical Arts  make their balletic entrance in the temple built by Glory for Louis XIV.

In the first act, Glaucus, a sea-god, has disguised himself as a Thracian prince in order to make love to Silla, who cares only for Mélicerte; but this Theban prince has disappeared and fallen in love with the sorceress Circe. Piqued by Glaucus’s indifference, Circe tries to win his love. After whisking through the air some satyrs who have been annoying her nymphs, Circe takes Glaucus to her palace in a chariot drawn by dragons. There she shows her indifference to Mélicerte’s love lament and offers her love to Glaucus.  When he remains faithful to Silla, Circe brings animals against him; but he makes them sink into the earth. The statues she animates meet with the same fate.  Circe sends Mélicerte a ring that makes him return to his love of Silla, bids that Silla continue to refuse Glaucus, and carries her off in a cloud.  Glaucus appeals to Venus, who sends some cupids to rescue Silla. Circe, finding herself powerless against Glaucus, resolves to punish him by means of the girl he loves. She first charms her so that she prefers Glaucus to Mélicerte and, when Mélicerte protests, she turns him into a tree. Then Circe makes Silla appear hideous by attaching monsters to her body. Silla leaps into the sea and Circe disappears with her palace; but Glaucus appeals to Neptune, who changes Silla into a rock and gets the consent of Jupiter and Destiny to her becoming a Nereid.  Glaucus is not allowed to marry Silla, however—for her love, caused by Circe’s charm, has departed.

Construction of the sets, stage machines, and the special magic effects required by the play began in October of 1674—a full six months before the première. The unusually high production costs caused some division among the actors and delayed the production. But with the première on Sunday, 17 March 1675, Circé proved to be highly profitable, and for one performance (31 March) the gross receipts reached a record 2775 livres. Years later, de Visé described the extraordinary popularity of this work in the Mercure Galant: “It is noteworthy that during the first six weeks the auditorium was completely filled from noon on, and that as no seats could be found, spectators gave a half louis d’or at the door solely to be admitted, and were content when, for the same sum paid for the lower boxes, one might be placed in the third balcony. Circé received 9 performances before the 1675 Lenten break, and was given 67 more times during the 1675-76 season. De Visé asserts that the production would have run longer “if the interests of one individual [i.e., Lully] has not made them cut back on singers.”

Five years later, the Troupe du Roy were joined by royal decree with the rival actors of the Hôtel de Bourgogne. This new company, known as La Comédie-Française, consisted of fifteen actors and twelve actresses—of which five of its new members were already accomplished playwrights.  Raymond Poisson wrote their first new comedy, Les Fous divertissants, which premiered on 14 November 1680.  This in fact was a full-scale comedy-ballet, conceived in the spirit of Molière’s final musical/balletic works and with an extensive score composed by Charpentier.

We will recall that, after he acquired the opera privilège, Lully sought to protect his monopoly by restricting the amount of music allowed in public theaters other than his own. By this time companies were limited to two singing actors, six string players, and no dancers of any kind. However, with the consolidation of the rival theaters into a single, state-subsidized institution, it would appear that a new spirit of détente arose between the Académie Royale de Musique and the Comédie-Française, and Lully’s restrictions on music and dance clearly were relaxed for this production.  In addition to the two singing lovers of the play (Léandre and Angélique, played by the actors de Villiers and perhaps Mlle Molière), three other singing actors (Verneuil, Guérin, and La Grange) performed in the intermèdes.  Moreover, Lully allowed the Comédie-Française to include parodies of excerpts from his latest two operas, Bellérophon (1679) and Proserpine (1680).

Poisson’s Les Fous divertissants followed in a series of lunatic plays that were very popular in the 17th century, and from which he borrowed freely. From Cervantes La Cueva de Salamanca Poisson derived many of his plot details—the warden’s departure, Angélique’s hypocritical farewell, the arrival of Léandre and the soldier, the husband’s unexpected return, and the use of a magical trick to rescue Léandre and the meal from a place of concealment.  Much of the dialogue for Act 3 was borrowed from the short story by Antoine Le Metel, sieur d’Ouville, entitled “Un jeune Advocat qui jouyt de la femme d’un bourgeois sous prétexte d’estre devin” (1643). And he followed Charles Beys’s L’Hospital des fous (1636) by introducing a concièrge who displays the lunatics for the public’s entertainment, and in introducing a young lover pretending to be mad to be near his beloved.

In the excerpt performed here, Monsieur Grognard, the warden of the asylum, departs to attend to his dying brother, and the inmates take this opportunity to throw a party.  Four dancing and three singing lunatics enter to the music of a march, and then one of them urges the young lovers in song to profit from her fiancé’s absence.  Meanwhile, the inmates show joy in their new found freedom in a dance, Les Fous déchaînés—for which Charpentier’s music suggests the effect of derangement by the abrupt juxtaposition of the triple-meter minuet with the furious, duple-meter pantomime.  In the next entrée, Les Geôliers, some keepers arrive to lock up the madmen, and the intermède ends with a manic “laughing trio” of infectious hilarity.

In the third act, Angélique’s lover Léandre has planned a banquet for her, for which the lunatics will provide the entertainment.  But first, he wishes to sing a little song that he has composed (“Ce n’est qu’entre deux Amans”), and asks that she respond with a minuet (“Quand la flame”).  Angélique’s maid Jacinte then brings news that their respective fathers have consented to their marriage.  When Grognard unexpectedly returns, he finds a soldier billeted in his home; he then requests something to eat, but is told that there is nothing in the house.  The soldier, having seen Léandre’s feast being brought in, pretends to be a magician, and he commands a “demon” to appear from the armoire carrying some roasted meat; then he summons the inmates to perform the concert that Léandre had prepared for Angélique.  Grognard fails to see the relevance of the first chanson (“Bacchus et l’Amour font débauche”—Bacchus & Cupid are living it up), and is mystified by the outburst of laughter caused by the even more transparent lyrics of the second song (“…the fat rogue, the drunken babbler, the big windbag, the decrepit old fool…pull the wool over his eyes, the ugly owl, the werewolf, the old hooter, the foolish cuckold”). The soldier then commands the demon to take the form of Léandre–who then departs with Angélique.  Jacinte tells Grognard of the trick, and informs him that Angélique and Léandre are to be married.  He summons his valets, only to find that the lunatics have locked them in their cells and are coming after Grognard.  The play ends with a lively ballet put on by the lunatics—consisting of a Marche des fous, a récit addressed to lovers (“Amans, vous faites bien de quitter ce sejour”), an entrée for eight fools “with caps and bells,” and a “dialogue de deux Fous amoureux” (“Je ne sçaurois vivre sans toy”).

Though Poisson’s plot is derivative, the play is remarkable for the variety of devices used for entertainment:  magic-effects, farce, drinking-songs, ballet, opera.  While it seems to have been well-received at the time of its premiere (one performance brought in over 1500 livres), the Comédie-Française gave Les Fous divertissants only eleven times between November 14 and December 2, 1680, and three times the following year.  It achieved greater success after Poisson’s death, when Florent Carton Dancourt reduced it to a one-act comedy entitled Le Bon Soldat—in which form it was performed 197 times during the early 18th century.

Charpentier, Corneille, and de Visé collaborated on four musical machine-plays for the Théâtre de Guénégaud and the Comédie-Française during 1675-81:  Circé (1675), L’Inconnu (1675), Le Triomphe des Dames (1676), and La Pierre philosophale (1681). Whereas their first three works enjoyed long and successful runs, La Pierre philosophale played there only twice (on 23 and 25 February) during Carnival of 1681.  Evidently its creators miscalculated the interests of the Parisian public with this satire on the popular cult of the ‘Cabalistes’ (Rosicrucians), for not even the spectacular machine-effects could save the production from failure.  It was soon withdrawn, and Corneille’s play was never published; all that survives is the printed libretto and Charpentier’s music.

The plot centers on a Marquis, who brings about two marriages by taking advantage of a bourgeois’s naïve belief in the occult. Monsieur Maugis and Madame Raimond are squandering their fortunes trying to discover the secret of the philosopher’s stone.  Maugis intends to use the stone’s power to regain his youth, whereupon he will marry Madame Raimond’s daughter Angélique.  Moreover, Maugis plans to give his own daughter, Marianne, to a Chevalier who seems interested in their experiments.  However, the Chevalier is merely pretending to be interested in order that he may marry Angélique himself, while Marianne loves a Marquis who plans to thwart her father’s plans. The Chevalier persuades Maugis to join the order of the Rosicrucians, and makes him believe that, when a member, he must not marry Angélique, but rather one of the invisible elemental spirits (a gnomide), while his daughter may be united to a silphe (actually the Marquis in disguise).

Act 4 takes place in the home of the Comte de Gabalis, a German residing in France who has offered to introduce Maugis to the mysteries of the Rosicrucians. Charpentier’s music accompanies the appearance of “a machine composed of four elements, of the height of a Mount Parnassus,” whereby the spirits associated with the four elements provide the music for this occult ritual. First, a Choeur des Quatre Éléments celebrates the victory of love in song and dance (‘Les sages par un choix heureux’), then a smaller group of these elements address themselves to the little gnomide, whom Maugis (knowing that gnomides guard treasures) has chosen as his wife (‘Vous, sur qui de cet heureux choix’). The little gnomide sings and dances a menuet to celebrate her forthcoming wedding (‘Le bel âge’), and the Marquis, disguised as a silphe, approaches Marianne and invites her to accept him as her spouse (‘Je suis un élément léger’). The four elements then dance, and Fire and Water concur that love has the power even to bring opposites together (‘Le Spectacle est assez beau’).  M. Maugis expresses his pleasure with these signs of rejoicing—but he begs his little gnomide to grow taller. She then disappears into the ground, and a large figure gradually emerges to the musical encouragement of the Choeur des Quatre Éléments (‘Croissez, gnomide, croissez’). Maugis is so astonished by this metamorphosis that he can scarcely believe his eyes.  Eventually the gnomide becomes jealous of Angélique, whom her mother later gives to the Chevalier. The Marquis (still disguised as a silphe) offers to appease the gnomide in exchange for Marianne’s hand, and at the end the parties go off to sign the marriage contracts.

From Paul’s post:

“Bologna’s Festa della Porchetta was an annual carnival held on 24 August for more than five centuries. It commemorated both the Feast of St Bartholomew and the victory of Bolognese forces over Frederick II during the Battle of Fossalta in 1249. Frederick’s son, King Enzo, was imprisoned for thirty years in the city centre in a tower that now bears his name, adjacent to where the Porchetta celebrations took place in Palazzo Maggiore.

It was customary for the city’s nobles to enjoy a banquet in a palace fronting onto Palazzo Maggiore, and a spit-roasted suckling pig, together with poultry, breads, cheeses and cakes, was thrown from the balcony for the regular townsfolk to fight over. The festivities evolved over the centuries into large-scale affairs with acrobats, games, singing and dancing, in theatrical productions of wars, historical events and allegorical performance plays. Giant purpose-specific floats, stages, theatre props and machinery were constructed each year to accommodate the unique requirements of the year’s entertainment theme.”

View the many images and read the entire post at BibliOdyssey

The late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were a period when the efforts to draw parishioners back into churches and solidify their faith had taken a decidedly theatrical turn, with church decorations, including marbles, paintings and sculptures, becoming evermore colorful, ostentatious and theatrical. Vesper music for solo voice with virtuoso embellishments, the use of a variety of instruments, and the colorful, sometimes highly embellished concertato psalm and Magnificat settings of Monteverdi reveal the efforts of composers to match the theatrical attractiveness of the ecclesiastical physical surroundings with an attractiveness of theatrically oriented music.

Impressive display, whether of the virtuoso solo voice or of vocal sonorities and instrumental color, become an important aesthetic goal in publications of the first decade of the new century. Not only does such music begin to match the physical surroundings in ostentation, but its attraction for listeners draws worshippers into church for what were essentially concerts of sacred music. From an economic standpoint, the process was self-feeding and circular: impressive music attracted more worshippers, who in turn gave more alms and other donations that financed the elaborate and expensive music-making. On the other hand, most music for Vespers during this first decade of the century still followed the traditional models and formats of the Cinquecento, though often a basso continuo part was added, especially toward the end of the decade.

Psalms by such composers as Giovanni Gastoldi, Giovanni Croce, Giulio Belli, and Lodovico Viadana not only reflected sixteenth-century styles, but were reprinted in multiple editions for many years to come, preserving the older traditions well into the new century. It is likely that the continuation and proliferation of traditional settings served feasts of lesser significance than the most important celebrations that featured the most elaborate music (often referred to in documents as “solemn Vespers”). Nevertheless, there were certain churches where more conservative styles, especially eight-voice, double choir psalmody were required for the most important feasts.

Magnificat will perform Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers on the weekend of April 23-25 and will also participate, along with Artek, AVE, The Marion Verbruggen Trio, Music’s Recreation, Sacabuche!, and Archetti, in a concert celebrating a century of Venetian vespers music from Monteverdi to Vivaldi as part of the Berkeley Early Music Festival and Exhibition on June 13.

Matteo Ricci

Matteo Ricci was born into a noble Italian family in Macerata, Italy. He studied law in Rome but became more interested in the new science that was sweeping Western Europe. Entering the Society of Jesus in 1571, he continued his studies in philosophy, theology, mathematics, cosmology, and astronomy. Ricci was sent on a mission to Asia and in 1580 was sent by Alessandro Valignani, superior of Jesuit missions in the East Indies, to prepare to enter China.

In the Portuguese colony of Macau Ricci mastered the Chinese language and entered China in 1583 dressed first in the clothing of a Buddhist monk and then later as a Confucian mandarin. He brought with him Western clocks, musical instruments, mathematical and astronomical instruments, and cosmological, geographical, and architectural works with maps and diagrams. These, along with Ricci’s phenomenal memory and mathematical and astronomical skills, attracted an important audience among the Chinese elite.

The Great Map of Ten Thousand Countries

After a decade of dialogue with members of the Chinese intelligentia, Ricci was called to meet with Emperor K’ang-Hsi in Beijing in 1601, the first western missionary to receive such an invitation. He became the court mathematician and remained in Beijing for the last nine years of his life. In 1602 , he published his “Great Map of Ten Thousand Countries,” a world map for China.

While in China Ricci wrote a Treatise on Friendship, a Treatise on Mnemonic Arts, a Chinese translation of Euclid’s Elements of Geometry, a book of Chinese apologetics—The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven, and Ten Discourses by a Paradoxical Man. In addition, the journals that he kept and edited for publication allow one of the few glimpses of an outsider’s view of Chinese society and government during a period when China was closed to foreign visitors.

The website IgnatianSpirituality notes:

“After Ricci’s death certain of his decisions were questioned by Church authorities. Especially questioned was Matteo Ricci’s acceptance of Chinese ancestor worship as a legitimate, nontheological memorial to their ancestors that Catholic converts could practice. Later missionaries, not as schooled in Chinese culture, questioned this interpretation and brought their case to the Vatican. After decades of debate, in 1705 the Vatican decided that the Chinese practice of ancestor worship rites was incompatible with Catholic doctrine and was forbidden. Hearing this, the Chinese emperor banned Christian missions from China in 1721, closing the door that Ricci worked so patiently to open.”

I have drawn freely from this and several other articles for this brief overview of the fascinating life of Matteo Ricci.  A wealth of information about Ricci is available on the Zhaoqing Ricci  Center website. The University of San Francisco’s Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History promotes Chinese-Western interaction in the spirit of friendship and respect exemplified by Ricci. An extensive article on Ricci and the Catholic Church’s deliberations with regards to Ricci’s mission can be read at the Catholic Encyclopedia site.

“Thus the effect of the fifth is to produce a tickling of the eardrum such that its softness is modified with sprightliness, giving at the same moment the impression of gentle kiss and of a bite.”

Music played not only a unique, but an essential role in leading Galileo to his new physics. Because it is an art demanding precise measurement and exact divisions, music reflected the spirit of Galileo’s science.

One of Galileo’s most important discoveries, the law of falling bodies, can actually be traced to his early musical experiments with his father, Vincenzo Galilei, a musicologist and lute virtuoso. Together, they discovered the motions of pendulums while measuring with weights, the tensions of lute strings.

Galileo was an outstanding lutenist himself, whose “charm of style and delicacy of touch” surpassed even that of his father. Playing the lute was a source of great pleasure and a special comfort to him in his final years, when blindness was added to the many other trials of his life.

”Everything Galileo ever did has been challenged,” said the late Stillman Drake, Canadian historian of science and preeminent biographer of Galileo. ”But ultimately it stands up.”

It was also in 1610 that Europe got its first taste of tea, a beverage that had been popular for centuries in China and Japan, as Amsterdam received its first shipment of the intoxicating leaves. The Dutch East India Company initially marketed tea as an exotic medicinal drink, but it was so expensive that only the very wealthy could afford it and it only became available to the general public later in the century.

In 1610, Cornelius Drebbel, best known perhaps for his invention of the submarine,  applied the principles he had used in his “perpetual mobile” to thermostatic regulators that controlled ovens, furnaces, and incubators – the first thermostat. As the temperature rose, air expanded, forcing quicksilver to close a damper. When it cooled, the damper opened. The incubator he made hatched both duck and chicken eggs.

Caravagio ca. 1600

The mannerist painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio died on July 18 1610 at the age of 39 and the circumstances of his death have been controversial ever since. It has been suggested that he contracted syphilis or even that he was assassinated but anthropologists from the universities of Pisa, Ravenna and Bologna are studying other theories – that he contracted malaria while traveling in Italy or that he suffered from lead poisoning. The anthropologists hope to prove their theory by carrying out DNA tests on bones which they believe are the remains of the Renaissance artist.

Renowned for his hot temper, heavy drinking and violent temperament Caravaggio was forced to go on the run in 1606 after killing a man in a tavern brawl, a crime for which he was condemned to death by Pope Paul V.

“Lead poisoning accentuates traits like aggressive and nervous behaviour, which Caravaggio displayed during his life,” said Silvano Vinceti, the team leader. “Painters in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries used these paints all the time and often suffered serious health problems as a result.” Francisco de Goya and Vincent van Gogh are both thought to have suffered from lead poisoning.

The Galilean Moons

In January 1610 Galileo Galilei first observed the four moons of Jupiter now known, appropriately, as “The Galilean Moons”. The largest of the many moons of Jupiter, Galileo initially named his discovery the Cosmica Sidera (“Cosimo’s stars”) but they are now known by the names given by Simon Marius in his 1614 Mundus Jovialis: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto – the lovers of Zeus.

Galileo first noticed Saturn’s peculiar shape later in 1610, well after the publication of his landmark book Sidereus Nuncius.  The story of how he initially revealed the new discovery to his fellow astronomers by means of an anagram is told in a 1974 article by Albert van Helden of Rice University.

Galileo's first sketches of his observation of four of Jupiter's moons

Galileo’s discovery of celestial bodies orbiting something other than the Earth dealt a serious blow to the Ptolemaic, or the geocentric, cosmology in which the universe orbits around the Earth. The possibility of viewing Saturn’s moons was made possible by improvements Galileo made to his telescope in 1609. Images of the moons as seen through Galileo’s telescope can be viewed here. Matk Thompson’s website Galileo 1610 has a wealth of information about Galileo as does Rice University’s Galileo Project website.

Arcangelo Corelli

Few musicians of the seventeenth century enjoyed the exalted status bestowed on Arcangelo Corelli (February 17, 1653- January 19, 1713). He was called the ‘new Orpheus of Our Times’ and the ‘divine Arc Angelo’, a clever pun on his Christian name and the Italian word for a bow (arco). The Englishman musician and writer Roger North described Corelli’s music as ‘transcendant’, ‘immortal’ and ‘the bread of life’ to musicians. Renowned as a virtuoso performer, an influential composer, and sought-after teacher, Corelli commanded respect and praise throughout Europe at the turn of the 18th century.

The fifth child born to a prosperous family of landowners in Fusignano; Corelli’s first musical study was probably with the local clergy, then in nearby Lugo and Faenza, and finally in Bologna, where he went in 1666. In Bologna he studied with Giovanni Benvenuti and Leonardo Brugnoli, the former representing the disciplined style of the Accademia filarmonica (to which Corelli was admitted in 1670), the latter a virtuoso violinist.

By 1675 Corelli was in Rome where he may have studied composition under Matteo Simonelli, from whom he would have absorbed the styles of Roman polyphony inherited from Palestrina. He may have traveled to France and Spain, though neither journey has been securely documented. In 1675 he is listed as a violinists in Roman payment documents and by the end of the decade he was active as a performer and leader of small and large instrumental ensembles in Roman homes and churches and at public celebrations.

Corelli had entered the service of Queen Christina of Sweden by 1679 and thanks to his musical achievements and growing international reputation he found no trouble in obtaining the support of a succession of influential patrons. In addition to Queen Christina, his Roman patrons included Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili, and Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, both wealthy and influential leaders of Roman society.

In 1684, Corelli and Alessandro Scarlatti became members of the Congregazione dei Virtuosi di S. Cecilia and in 1706, along with Pasquini and Scarlatti, he was inducted into the Arcadian Academy round the time that he met Handel in engagements at the Pamphili and Ruspoli palaces. He would direct the orchestra for performances of Handel’s La resurrezione shortly before retiring from public life in 1708.

Wealthy since birth, Corelli had the luxury of cultivating a personal mystique, acting more like a gentleman than a common musician. His wealthy patrons treating him almost as their equal, he was not burdened by the pressure of writing music on demand and composed selectively and at a his own pace, meticulously revising his music before publishing them late in life. This careful polishing made Corelli’s published pieces into models of economy and elegance. Their concision and urbanity contrasted sharply with the unbridled passion and unpredictability of music earlier in the seventeenth century.

Corelli’s reputation as a performer and teacher was at least equal to the reputation he achieved as a composer. Among his many students were Geminiani, Vivaldi, Gasparini, and Somis. His sonatas were widely performed and often reprinted, both as ideal practice material for students and as models for composers. For the solo sonatas (op. 5) there are several extant sets of ornaments, some attributed to the composer himself (Walsh, 1710); his works remained especially popular in England, where Ravenscroft imitated the trio sonatas and Geminiani transformed several solo and trio sonatas into concertos.

Corelli died a wealthy man on January 19, 1713, at Rome in the 59th year of his life. But long before his death, he had taken a place among the immortal musicians of all time, and he maintains that exalted position today.