Recorder Home Page

Inspiration, Gabriel Metsu (1629-1667)

Recorder Iconography

Compiled by Nicholas S. Lander

Introduction

This enumerative iconography (sensu Heck et al. 1999) contains a comprehensive index to art works featuring the recorder or recorder-like instruments. It contains almost 4,000 entries, primarily paintings but also drawings, prints, engravings, etchings, tapestry, stained-glass, wood-carving and sculpture. This data has been gathered over many years from a variety of sources including original observation in art galleries; image repositories; printed material such as books, journals, magazines, concert programs, CD covers, calendars, postcards, and advertising material; other WWW sites, notably those maintained by art galleries or art dealers; reader contributions, and the work of several collaborators – one in particular.

Wherever possible each entry contains the following information:

Title (date), medium, size, artist (dates)
Location, inventory details
References
Brief description and notes.

The abbreviations and conventions used for artists' names, dates and nationality are those adopted by the Courtauld Institute of Art (1995), though there are invariably exceptions to these guidelines. In general, prefixes such as 'da', 'de', 'du', 'ten', 'ter', 'van', 'van de', 'van der', 'von' and so on are not normally counted as part of the surname. Nicknames are sometimes so well known that they have become accepted as the main name, e.g. Guercino [Giovanni Francesco Barbieri]. Artists from the Low Countries are all described as Netherlandish up to about 1610; between this date and about 1835 they are classified as Dutch or Flemish except in some cases of dispute or ambiguity, where Netherlandish is still used; after about 1835 Flemish becomes Belgian.

A list of Galleries, dealers, auctioneers, libraries consulted and referred to in this document together with pointers to their web sites (where these are available) is provided.

Member institutions of Répertoire International d'Iconographie Musicale consulted to date include those in Innsbruck, Madrid, Munich, Paris, Stockholm, The Hague and Tours. These are referred to simply as "Innsbruck RIdIM", etc. respectively. Similarly, the private image collection of Dr Herman Moeck is referred to simply as "Archiv Moeck".

In many cases I have included pointers to reproductions of the works listed which are available over the Web. Digital images, prints and photocopies of many more are available on request.

Entries are arranged by artist. Dates, provenance and often brief dictionary-style biographical notes are provided for each artist. Works by anonymous artists are listed century by century, and by country within each century.

On inspection, many early illustrations of wind instruments which have been claimed as recorders will be found to be highly ambiguous. These ambiguous illustrations fall into two camps namely:

Pipes, in which the beak and window characteristic of duct-flutes are lacking. Such instruments may be flageolets or recorders, but may just as well represent cornetts or shawms, or even trumpets.
Duct-flutes, where the disposition of holes and/or fingers are shown in insufficient detail to categorise them as either flageolets or recorders.

Medieval and early renaissance illustrations of duct-flutes which are highly likely to be recorders are those in which tone holes for seven fingers are clearly shown. Often the lowest tone-hole is paired, with one hole plugged with wax. Of these recorders, several external forms are generally depicted:

Cylindrical, in which the body is cylindrical throughout its length. Such instruments are sometimes shown with clearly demarcated beak- and foot-pieces. These are often assumed to be so-called 'cylindrical-bore' or 'Dordrecht-style' recorders.
Near-cylindrical, in which the body is more or less cylindrical (often appearing obconical due to perspective), the larger sizes often with a fontanelle (a pierced wooden barrel covering the keywork on the footjoint). These are often assumed to be of wide, simple (ie not choked) tapering bore internally, the so-called 'Virdung' or 'Agricola' style recorders often shown in consorts with other similar recorders.
Flared, in which the body is in one piece and cylindrical or slightly tapering throughout its length with a pronounced flare at the foot. These are assumed to represent variously the so-called Renaissance-bore ('choke-bore') recorders (often depicted in consorts of like instruments), Ganassi-bore, or van Eyck-bore (hand fluyt) recorders, often shown alone or in combination with instruments other than recorders.

Amongst instruments in the latter category, Legêne (1995) has recognised an 'early baroque' form of recorder of which the defining features are: ornamental rings at the foot and above the labium, longer windways, "wave profile", and sometimes a highly flared bell.

Loretto (1995) has rightly cautioned against the practice of extrapolating the internal bore of a recorder from an illustration of its external profile and, to some extent, the context in which it is depicted. Few attempts are made to do so here beyond the above categories.

The Preface to RIdIM's Inventory of Music Iconography (Ford 1986) notes that "Completeness has been the ideal of RIdIM cataloguing". However, it goes on to say that "Our office has decided to exclude one subject for reasons of banality and lack of musical significance: putti playing wind instruments". A brief perusal of Recorder Iconography will soon illustrate the dangers inherrent in such an unnecessarily limited approach. As in any scholarly endeavour, one must be careful here not to throw the baby putti out with the bathwater, so to speak. All recorder players, including musical putti, are very welcome to strut their stuff in Recorder Iconography.

Readers are encouraged to make free use of the information presented here. However, extensive use or citation should be acknowledged in the usual way. The following format is suggested:

Lander, N.S. (1996-2007). Recorder Iconography. <http://www.recorderhomepage.net/art.html>