The lid of the spinet organ built for L. F. Behaim in Nuremberg, 1619: music at the heart of an encomiastic life story governed by the signs of the months, the seasons, and the planets

Florence Gétreau (1)

1 IReMus - Institut de Recherche en Musicologie

From refined books of hours with unicum status to printed almanacs containing multiple images that were more widely distributed, a range of media conveyed ancestral beliefs – particularly influenced by ancient and biblical texts that were revived during the Renaissance – in the power of the planets over the cycles of earthly life and human activities. Among abundant visual sources devoted to the times of day and night, the months, the seasons, the signs of the zodiac, and the Planet-Gods, we will look at a singular case, likely unique in its kind: the decoration of a spinet lid, whose programmatic complexity embodies with particular symbolic richness a patrician patron who placed music at the heart of his existence. This lid both protected and decorated the polygonal spinet built by Paul Wissmaier, completed in 1619, at the request of the Nuremberg patrician Lucas Friedrich Behaim von Schwartzbach (1587–1648). The spinet lid, preserved without the instrument, consists of a banded upper section with seven cartouches. The subject is the seven Planet-Gods (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Apollo, Venus, Mercury, and Diana) in the form of statues in the Antique style, each surmounted by the corresponding signs of the zodiac, surrounded by contemporary scenes. The principal part of the cover depicts a music scene in the open air in the Behaims’ garden at the Thumenberg manor house, with the city of Nuremberg in the distance. Musicians, members of the family, painter, spinet builder, organ builder are portrayed, and apart from the painter, identified since 1960 thanks to archives documents. This article propose a new attribution and suggest that the artist links in a single composition, based on the musical theory of Gioseffo Zarlino, the harmony of the cosmos (musica mundana), that of family and friends (musica humana), and finally that of the instrumentalists in a vision mis en abyme – for the observer of the double instrument when it was played – and of the musician at the keyboard (musica instrumentalis). It can be assumed that Behaim, a highly educated man and very experienced traveler, gave his painter a quite prescriptive programme, encouraging, as in the education of his own children, friendship among the arts through the subterfuge of the children of Mercury and children of Venus. The ideal garden at the centre of this complex painting, like many other Antwerp virginal lids from the last decades of the sixteenth century, links these moments of Behaim’s private life to the tradition of late medieval books of hours, placing them firmly within both his humanist culture and family background.

Mots clés: Lucas Friedrich Behaim von Schwartzbach (1587–1648); Anna Maria Pfinzing von Henfenfeld; Johann Staden the Elder (1581-1634); Paul Wissmaier; Stefan Cuntz; Jan Pietersz Saenredam; Hendrick Goltzius; Frederik van Valkenborch; Paul Juvenel the Elder (1579-1643); spinet; organ; the times of day and night; the months; the seasons; the signs of the zodiac; the Planet-Gods.

Domaines: Musique, musicologie et arts de la scène; Art et histoire de l'art

Florence Gétreau. The lid of the spinet organ built for L. F. Behaim in Nuremberg, 1619: music at the heart of an encomiastic life story governed by the signs of the months, the seasons, and the planets. Die Tonkunst, 2023, 17 (2), pp.152-165. ⟨halshs-04018726⟩