Spotlight on music in paintings
Part 1: Divine harmonies in the art of Ribera and Baldung
Throughout art history, music has provided a rich subject for artists, who used it as a means to explore the complexities of both the human and divine realms. In The Klesch Collection, four remarkable paintings by Jusepe de Ribera, Hans Baldung Grien, Judith Leyster and Jan Davidsz. de Heem reflect this exploration, each expressing the evolving role of music in European society from the early sixteenth century to the mid-seventeenth century. A two-part Spotlight series will examine these works through both art historical and musicological lenses, exploring how paintings contribute to our knowledge of musical instruments and their symbolism. This first instalment focuses on the religious works by Ribera and Baldung, revealing how these paintings connect viewers to ideas of the divine origins of music and inspire spiritual devotion.
Fig. 1: Jusepe de Ribera, King David, c. 1616, The Klesch Collection.
Historically, music has been imbued with magical powers, rooted in ancient concepts of universal harmony and belief in its restorative powers. In Ancient Greece, music’s divine origin was attributed to the Muses, custodians of the harmony of the spheres,1 who were led in choir by Apollo, the god of music and medicine, playing his sacred lyre. In the Christian Middle Ages, music that was not devoted to God’s glory was condemned, creating a divide between sacred and profane practices. In art and literature, musical instruments were relegated to the realm of the devil.2 These long-standing conflicting views on music — both as a divine gift and as an instrument of the devil — mean that its representation in art could act equally as positive inspiration or a cautionary warning.
Early Christianity adopted from ancient civilisations the idea of musically extolling the existence of God and absorbed certain Greek myths, like that of Orpheus — a demi-god who was gifted his first lyre by Apollo — into its iconography. Orpheus, believed to cure melancholy and perform wonders through music, personified humanity’s unique ability to understand and harness its powerful effects, his instrument symbolising divine harmony. His figure foreshadows that of King David, who in the first book of Samuel soothes the tormented King Saul with his lyre.3 David, named king of Israel upon the death of Saul, became the Christian embodiment of the miraculous powers of music. His story demonstrates how music can restore the harmony of the world, as captured in Ribera’s powerful King David (c. 1616) in The Klesch Collection.4
Fig. 2: Detail of King David, showing the lyre.
Fig. 3: King David in St Wulfstan’s Portiforium, c. 1060–69, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 391, p. 24. Images courtesy of The Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
In this painting, David as composer of the Psalms is enveloped in a beam of heavenly light (fig. 1). With one hand on his chest and the other lowered in a receptive gesture, King David embodies a vessel for God’s voice as he intones a divinely inspired psalm. Ribera portrays King David wearing a royal ermine cloak accompanied by a fictional lyre depicted in the lower left, with its two parallel arms and a crossbar, loosely based on the instrument he is believed to have introduced into temple worship (fig. 2).5 The carved lion’s head on the lyre — an ancient symbol of power and royalty often used to decorate instruments, especially harps (fig. 3) — further evokes David’s kingship and lineage as the ‘Lion of Judah’. This device serves a dual function: mirroring King David’s upward gaze, the viewer is invited to reflect on his role as monarch and musician, while the lion’s tormented roar recalls the exorcism of Saul, underscoring the power of divine music to restore harmonious balance. In Ribera’s intimate portrayal of sacred music personified, he uses the symbolic value of King David’s lyre to reinforce his subject’s dual role and to incite worship through allusions to the spiritual power of music. The painting recalls how, during the founding centuries of Christianity (c. first to mid-eight centuries AD), King David’s biblical authority and his Psalms legitimised ‘playing before God’ as a form of worship, challenging the solemnity favoured by religious purists.6
Fig. 4. Hans Baldung Grien, The Holy Family with Five Angels, c. 1507/8, The Klesch Collection.
Baldung’s music-playing angels in The Holy Family with Five Angels (c. 1507–1508) exemplify this oldest and most sacred role of music — glorifying the divine — as encouraged in Psalm 95:2: ‘Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song’. Their presence in the iconography of this Holy Family stems from biblical imagery depicting angels as eternally praising and glorifying God, by extension linking Christ’s earthly presence with heavenly reverence and reinforcing his role as the focus of divine adoration. Rather than a grand orchestra,7 Baldung presents a modest ensemble of two flautists and a lute player — often paired together in contemporaneous musical practice — gathered intimately at the Virgin’s feet (fig. 4).8 In keeping with Baldung’s experimental approach to familiar themes, his portrayal echoes humanist interests in realism, classical antiquity and an individualised relationship with faith. Notably, the lute-plucking angel stands out: he is dressed in a layman’s cloak and is wingless. A rare occurrence in Renaissance art, representing winged and wingless angels side by side served an important narrative purpose. The presence or absence of wings, symbols of the angels’ transcendental nature, denote a scene as either heavenly or earthbound.9 Moreover, Baldung provided his earthly angel with an equally recognisable instrument: the six-course lute with eleven strings, plucked with a quill (fig. 5).10 In contrast, the flutes, being imaginary rather than real instruments, help to elevate the lutist’s fellow players to the celestial realm (fig. 6).11 The choice of the lute carries further weight: rooted in the mythological outcome of the musical competition between Apollo and the flautist Marsyas, string instruments were awarded a higher status. Here, Baldung further elevates the lute by contrasting the lutist’s composed demeanour with the childlike attitude of the angels handling the flutes. Seemingly more concerned with making noise rather than music, the flautists’ cheeks balloon comically as they exert maximum force — contradicting books on etiquette from the Renaissance period, which advised courtiers against playing wind instruments for this reason.12 In this scene, Baldung pushes the boundaries of established convention, blending playful contemporary references with introspective spirituality. His humanised angel — with a familiar appearance and a recognisable instrument, which extends beyond the picture plane from the imagined space into ours — bridges the earthly and divine realms, offering a relatable model of worship that encourages a personal connection to devotion through music.
Fig. 5: Detail of The Holy Family, showing the lute.
Fig. 6: Detail of The Holy Family, showing the flute.
Ribera’s King David and Baldung’s Holy Family present music as a sacred gift, emphasising its ancient origins and its inspiring role in glorifying the divine. In Part 2 of this Spotlight, we will shift focus to the opposite end of the spectrum, exploring how Leyster’s music-making company and De Heem’s choice of instruments in his still life could convey a cautionary purpose.
Notes
1. M. Kyrova, ‘Music in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting’, in E. Buijsen and L.P. Grijp (eds.), Music & Painting in the Golden Age, Zwolle, 1994, p. 38.
2. They were often depicted as tools for torture, as in Hieronymus Bosch’s The Temptation of Saint Anthony (c. 1500) or Jan Mandijn’s The Mocking of Job (c. 1550). To resolve the contradiction of musical instruments’ favourable biblical depiction, especially as portrayed in the Psalms, the instruments were often given an allegorical or symbolical meaning based on the shape, name or sound of the instrument. For example, the triangular shape of the psaltery was interpreted as a symbol of the Holy Trinity.
3. I. Ember, Music in Painting: Music as Symbol in Renaissance and Baroque Art, Budapest, 1984, pp. 9–22; R. Katz, The Powers of Music: Aesthetic Theory and the Invention of Opera, London, 1994, p. 111.
4. W. Salmen, König David – eine Symbolfigur in der Musik, Berlin; Boston, 2018, p. 8.
5. From the High Middle Ages onwards, David is more commonly depicted with a harp, roughly the shape of a triangle, rather than a lyre. Salmen 2018, p. 9; correspondence with Ian Pittaway, 16.10.2024.
6. Salmen 2018, p. 8.
7. Ember 1984, p. 18.
8. Melodic voices such as flutes were often accompanied by bass string instruments such as the lute. Burgers 2013, p. 45.
9. M. Gill, Angels and the Order of Heaven in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, New York, 2014, pp. 5–7.
10. In lutes, the strings are grouped in courses, i.e. two strings are tuned to the same exact pitch to be played in one stroke, so as to reinforce the volume. Usually, the highest-pitched course consists only of a single string, called the chanterelle. Thus, a five-course lute has nine strings, a six-course lute eleven, and so on. The technique of using a quill as a plectrum was employed on the four- and five-course lutes of the Middle Ages. As the number of strings increased over the course of the fifteenth century, the lutes increasingly began to be played with fingertips rather than plectrums. This change from quill to finger playing began in the 1470s and was universal by the 1530s, the six-course lutes are represented in art from 1475. I. Pittaway, ‘The lute: a brief history from the 13th to the 18th century’, Early Music Muse, 13th July 2015, https://earlymusicmuse.com/lutethumbnailhistory/.
Lutes were likely familiar to the young Baldung, as his teacher, Dürer, wrote that if an art student becomes melancholy from too much practice, he should take up Saitenspiel, or the playing of a stringed instrument, and thus revitalise himself. See Ember 1984, p. 26.
11. Since the window/labium is clearly visible, they can be classed as duct flutes. Based on the number of finger holes, they are not recorders but perhaps represent an early flageolet. Correspondence with recorder expert Nicholas Lander, 29 October 2024. For a full history and identification of the recorder, see D. Lasocki, The Recorder, New Haven; London, 2022.
12. For a contemporary audience, this imagery would have recalled the goddess Athena’s distaste for the flute which, when she blew it, made her cheeks puff out and distorted her face. Kyrova 1994, p. 46.
Spotlight on music in paintings
Part 1: Divine harmonies in the art of Ribera and Baldung
Throughout art history, music has provided a rich subject for artists, who used it as a means to explore the complexities of both the human and divine realms. In The Klesch Collection, four remarkable paintings by Jusepe de Ribera, Hans Baldung Grien, Judith Leyster and Jan Davidsz. de Heem reflect this exploration, each expressing the evolving role of music in European society from the early sixteenth century to the mid-seventeenth century. A two-part Spotlight series will examine these works through both art historical and musicological lenses, exploring how paintings contribute to our knowledge of musical instruments and their symbolism. This first instalment focuses on the religious works by Ribera and Baldung, revealing how these paintings connect viewers to ideas of the divine origins of music and inspire spiritual devotion.
Fig. 1: Jusepe de Ribera, King David, c. 1616, The Klesch Collection.
Historically, music has been imbued with magical powers, rooted in ancient concepts of universal harmony and belief in its restorative powers. In Ancient Greece, music’s divine origin was attributed to the Muses, custodians of the harmony of the spheres,1 who were led in choir by Apollo, the god of music and medicine, playing his sacred lyre. In the Christian Middle Ages, music that was not devoted to God’s glory was condemned, creating a divide between sacred and profane practices. In art and literature, musical instruments were relegated to the realm of the devil.2 These long-standing conflicting views on music — both as a divine gift and as an instrument of the devil — mean that its representation in art could act equally as positive inspiration or a cautionary warning.
Early Christianity adopted from ancient civilisations the idea of musically extolling the existence of God and absorbed certain Greek myths, like that of Orpheus — a demi-god who was gifted his first lyre by Apollo — into its iconography. Orpheus, believed to cure melancholy and perform wonders through music, personified humanity’s unique ability to understand and harness its powerful effects, his instrument symbolising divine harmony. His figure foreshadows that of King David, who in the first book of Samuel soothes the tormented King Saul with his lyre.3 David, named king of Israel upon the death of Saul, became the Christian embodiment of the miraculous powers of music. His story demonstrates how music can restore the harmony of the world, as captured in Ribera’s powerful King David (c. 1616) in The Klesch Collection.4
Fig. 2: Detail of King David, showing the lyre.
Fig. 3: King David in St Wulfstan’s Portiforium, c. 1060–69, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 391, p. 24. Images courtesy of The Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
In this painting, David as composer of the Psalms is enveloped in a beam of heavenly light (fig. 1). With one hand on his chest and the other lowered in a receptive gesture, King David embodies a vessel for God’s voice as he intones a divinely inspired psalm. Ribera portrays King David wearing a royal ermine cloak accompanied by a fictional lyre depicted in the lower left, with its two parallel arms and a crossbar, loosely based on the instrument he is believed to have introduced into temple worship (fig. 2).5 The carved lion’s head on the lyre — an ancient symbol of power and royalty often used to decorate instruments, especially harps (fig. 3) — further evokes David’s kingship and lineage as the ‘Lion of Judah’. This device serves a dual function: mirroring King David’s upward gaze, the viewer is invited to reflect on his role as monarch and musician, while the lion’s tormented roar recalls the exorcism of Saul, underscoring the power of divine music to restore harmonious balance. In Ribera’s intimate portrayal of sacred music personified, he uses the symbolic value of King David’s lyre to reinforce his subject’s dual role and to incite worship through allusions to the spiritual power of music. The painting recalls how, during the founding centuries of Christianity (c. first to mid-eight centuries AD), King David’s biblical authority and his Psalms legitimised ‘playing before God’ as a form of worship, challenging the solemnity favoured by religious purists.6
Fig. 4. Hans Baldung Grien, The Holy Family with Five Angels, c. 1507/8, The Klesch Collection.
Baldung’s music-playing angels in The Holy Family with Five Angels (c. 1507–1508) exemplify this oldest and most sacred role of music — glorifying the divine — as encouraged in Psalm 95:2: ‘Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song’. Their presence in the iconography of this Holy Family stems from biblical imagery depicting angels as eternally praising and glorifying God, by extension linking Christ’s earthly presence with heavenly reverence and reinforcing his role as the focus of divine adoration. Rather than a grand orchestra,7 Baldung presents a modest ensemble of two flautists and a lute player — often paired together in contemporaneous musical practice — gathered intimately at the Virgin’s feet (fig. 4).8 In keeping with Baldung’s experimental approach to familiar themes, his portrayal echoes humanist interests in realism, classical antiquity and an individualised relationship with faith. Notably, the lute-plucking angel stands out: he is dressed in a layman’s cloak and is wingless. A rare occurrence in Renaissance art, representing winged and wingless angels side by side served an important narrative purpose. The presence or absence of wings, symbols of the angels’ transcendental nature, denote a scene as either heavenly or earthbound.9 Moreover, Baldung provided his earthly angel with an equally recognisable instrument: the six-course lute with eleven strings, plucked with a quill (fig. 5).10 In contrast, the flutes, being imaginary rather than real instruments, help to elevate the lutist’s fellow players to the celestial realm (fig. 6).11 The choice of the lute carries further weight: rooted in the mythological outcome of the musical competition between Apollo and the flautist Marsyas, string instruments were awarded a higher status. Here, Baldung further elevates the lute by contrasting the lutist’s composed demeanour with the childlike attitude of the angels handling the flutes. Seemingly more concerned with making noise rather than music, the flautists’ cheeks balloon comically as they exert maximum force — contradicting books on etiquette from the Renaissance period, which advised courtiers against playing wind instruments for this reason.12 In this scene, Baldung pushes the boundaries of established convention, blending playful contemporary references with introspective spirituality. His humanised angel — with a familiar appearance and a recognisable instrument, which extends beyond the picture plane from the imagined space into ours — bridges the earthly and divine realms, offering a relatable model of worship that encourages a personal connection to devotion through music.
Fig. 5: Detail of The Holy Family, showing the lute.
Fig. 6: Detail of The Holy Family, showing the flute.
Ribera’s King David and Baldung’s Holy Family present music as a sacred gift, emphasising its ancient origins and its inspiring role in glorifying the divine. In Part 2 of this Spotlight, we will shift focus to the opposite end of the spectrum, exploring how Leyster’s music-making company and De Heem’s choice of instruments in his still life could convey a cautionary purpose.