of
Musical Collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is one of the world's leading authorities on the history of
musical instruments. He is also an erudite historian of art. Combining these two interests he has for many years
studied the innumerable representations of
musical instruments
in Western art.
In this collection of closely related articles, he examines what these pictures tell of the design and construction of instruments, of their performance, practice, and of the often subtle symbolic use to which artists put them. Kithara and cittern, lute and lyre, bagpipe and hurdy-gurdy, and the ubiquitous lira da braccio, all of these figured largely
in the art of the Middle Ages or the
Renaissance, together with a clutch of shwms, zinks, and crumhorns, and a variety of fantastic instruments that existed only
in the imagination of the artists.In more than 200 photographs and many drawings, Winternizt illustrates instruments that range from an Egytptian wall-painting of a harp to a musette
in a Watteau Fete champetre. He draws from the works of Titian, Raphael, Durer, and Bruegel, and also from
medieval manuscripts and sculpture. Winternitz discusses these diverse elements with a combination of formidable learning, wit, and keen insight that makes this book at once a seminal work for scholars and a delight for lovers of art and
music. (less)
