Music in Painting

Fülszöveg

"At one time, connoisseurs of art considered it an intellectual garne to solve the hidden meanings of paintings. The relevance and reception of fine arts have since changed. Nowadays aesthetic values are deemed to be more important, but even today's museumgoers should not forego trying to thoroughly understand a painting as the intellectual product of a specific age." Ildikó Ember's book, written in an enjoyable style and containing a wealth of information, guides the reader into the world of musical symbols appearing in paintings. The author examines why and how painters of various ages depicted musical instruments and musical themes. The author arranged her message around the core of various key ideas. In the section entitled Music: The Most Perfect Art, she investigates the theories concerning the divine origin of music, its extraordinary power, and the role separation of "two kinds of music", as these were rendered by painters. The themes of divine and satanic music were... Tovább

Fülszöveg

"At one time, connoisseurs of art considered it an intellectual garne to solve the hidden meanings of paintings. The relevance and reception of fine arts have since changed. Nowadays aesthetic values are deemed to be more important, but even today's museumgoers should not forego trying to thoroughly understand a painting as the intellectual product of a specific age." Ildikó Ember's book, written in an enjoyable style and containing a wealth of information, guides the reader into the world of musical symbols appearing in paintings. The author examines why and how painters of various ages depicted musical instruments and musical themes. The author arranged her message around the core of various key ideas. In the section entitled Music: The Most Perfect Art, she investigates the theories concerning the divine origin of music, its extraordinary power, and the role separation of "two kinds of music", as these were rendered by painters. The themes of divine and satanic music were discernible throughout the Middle Ages, and the section entitled Angels Instead of Muses deals with this. Views concerning the magic effect of music originate from Antiquity, and in a modified context, these survived into the medieval period. This is the theme of the chapter Music Restores and Inspires. The advent of the Renaissance not only brought the revival of legends from classical mythology but developed a new system of symbols in which musical instruments were accorded special roles, as detailed under the heading Music- Love-Death. Most of the forty-nine works of art selected for analysis are the products of
western European Renaissance and Baroque, but in order to shed light on the origin and primary meaning of symbols, several earlier works have also been included (paintings by Giotto, Van Eyck, Fra Angelico, Piero della Francesca, Memling, Dürer, Bosch, Raphael, Garavaggio, Rubens and Rembrandt). On the cover: Garavaggio: Rest on the Flight into Egypt (detail) Second edition CORVINA Vissza