John Rice
Rochester, MN
Music in Arcadia: Batoni’s Portrait of Giacinta
Orsini and Aurisicchio’s Cantata on the Departure of Her Father
Pompeo Batoni’s portrait of
the young noblewoman Giacinta Orsini, leaning on a harpsichord and holding a
lyre, is well known to historians of eighteenth-century Italian portraiture. It
has been exhibited and reproduced often, attracting attention not only for its
beauty and for the teenage subject’s amazing accomplishments and talents, but
also because Batoni (known today primarily as a painter of Britons on the Grand
Tour) made few portraits of Italian women. The scholars who have commented on
the portrait have said little about the prominent role in it of music: not only
the two instruments but the manuscript that rests conspicuously on the music stand,
as if inviting viewers to peruse it.
Accepting the invitation, I have identified the music as
an excerpt from a cantata by Antonio Aurisicchio, virtuoso in the service of Cardinal Domenico Orsini, Giacinta’s father.
The cantata, which survives in a manuscript in the Frank V. de Bellis
Collection at San Francisco State University, is a substantial work for coloratura
soprano and orchestra consisting of an overture, two obbligato recitatives and
two arias. The manuscript does not name the author of the text or explain its
purpose. The author was Giacinta herself, a member of Rome’s Arcadian Academy;
she addressed this componimento per
musica to her father, who was about to set out on a long voyage.
The identification of Giacinta and Aurisicchio as
co-creators of the music in Batoni’s portrait, and the discovery that it served
as an expression of a daughter’s affection for her father, enhance our
understanding of the painting’s complex program, which documents Giacinta’s
place in Arcadia and in one of Rome’s wealthiest families. My presentation will
discuss Giacinta’s life and achievements, her componimento per musica and its setting by Aurisicchio, and the
role of their cantata in Batoni’s portrait. I hope to arrange, as the final
part of the presentation, a performance of the music depicted in portrait.
For
a good reproduction of Batoni’s portrait of Giacinta Orsini, see http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/detail.php?ID=172264
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