A renewed interest in music pervaded Modena—the capital of the Este duchy since 1598—from the very first years of the Restoration, which, following the fall of Napoleon, saw the restoration of the old monarchies, as sanctioned by the Congress of Vienna. With the Este dynasty restored in 1814 under Duke Francis IV of Austria-Este, musical culture flourished not only in the theatres, which had a distinguished tradition dating back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and had remained particularly lively during French rule, but also in the drawing rooms of aristocratic palaces and the gardens of summer villas, and hence within the more restricted circles of family and friends. Chamber-music entertainments were frequently held and were often entrusted to “amateurs”, that is, performers who did not play professionally, some of whom nevertheless possessed outstanding abilities. Accessing knowledge of this private circle of music enthusiasts is by no means easy, given the relative scarcity of documentation; nevertheless, several works of art can shed some light on this secluded yet widespread musical practice in Modena at the time.

Dating to the early years of the Restoration in Modena is a family scene painted by Countess Anna Campori Seghizzi (1781–1821), daughter of General Giuseppe Campori, Marquis of Soliera, and wife of Count Paolo Seghizzi. An amateur miniaturist working in a well-defined Neoclassical style, she portrayed herself in the Self-Portrait at the Spinet with her Daughter Giulia (c. 1815–1895), the future Marchioness Coccapani Imperiali (Modena, Galleria Estense) (FIG. 1). The miniature, painted in tempera on paper mounted on a small ivory plaque, with delicate brushwork and enamel-like layers of paint, is an expression of exquisite Neoclassical taste, paralleling the manner of the Lombard artist Giambattista Gigola. Anna depicts herself seated on an Empire-style chair, with the little girl sitting on her lap, apparently interrupting her performance at the spinet in order to turn towards the viewer. Beneath the instrument, with its carved decoration, a basket containing several rolled-up musical scores can be seen; beneath the chair is a small vase filled with roses and other flowers. It is a small work that conveys not only the noblewoman’s cultural refinement but also an intimate domestic atmosphere of affection. The funerary plaque on the wall at her burial place, the church of San Biagio nel Carmine in Modena, would display, alongside her profile in a tondo carved with crisp Neoclassical precision by court sculptor Giuseppe Pisani, a palette with brushes and a musical score, emblems of her cultivated passions.

On the basis of manuscripts preserved in the Biblioteca Estense Universitaria in Modena, Riccardo Castagnetti has reconstructed the manner in which Anna Campori received both instrumental and vocal training. She was a pupil of the well-known Neapolitan composer Michele Fusco, who was active in Modena during the first half of the nineteenth century, where he served as concertmaster and chorus director of the municipal orchestra. According to Castagnetti’s research, Fusco’s teaching of the noblewoman must have begun around 1811, also producing teaching materials intended exclusively for her. From these materials, the scholar infers that “the skill and refinement Anna Campori achieved at the keyboard can be glimpsed in Fusco’s Sinfonia per pianoforte, the only non-didactic piece dedicated to his noble pupil, whose performance requires a good command of the instrument, both technically and expressively.”

Another miniature, in tempera on ivory, depicts Ciro Menotti Playing the Guitar (Modena, Museo del Risorgimento) (FIG. 2). He was the celebrated patriot (1798–1831), a native of Carpi (Modena) and promoter of the failed Carbonari uprising of 1831. After his conspiracy was uncovered, he was arrested at his Modena palace and executed on the orders of Duke Francis IV. In a date certainly prior to 1820, Menotti is portrayed as a young man against a romantic landscape, framed by vegetation evoking a sentimental atmosphere, while forming chords on the guitar. He appears to have been distracted from his concentration in order to turn his gaze towards the viewer. The placement of the guitar on his right thigh, over a white cloth, appears to be “a position suited to someone wishing to perform simple musical accompaniment”, as Carla Costa observes in her discussion of the well-known Portrait of Carolina Pitrot Angiolini, painted by Andrea Appiani around 1810 (Milan, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana). On the basis of stylistic comparisons suggested by its high quality, the Modena miniature is now attributed to the Carpi nobleman Ippolito Bianchini Ciarlini (1767–1849), an amateur painter who produced similar small portraits of various members of Menotti’s family, including his father Giuseppe and sister Virginia (Carpi, Modena, Museo Civico).

Beyond its historical and iconographic value, the miniature, intended by virtue of its intimate character to preserve family memories, becomes a document of the tastes and customs of the upper classes, including their musical pursuits. Menotti, belonging to the prosperous upper bourgeoisie as the son of a wealthy entrepreneur and dealer in wood shavings, had received an excellent education, which included musical training, potentially also serving as a means of social distinction in drawing rooms and cultural circles. Thus, after moving to Modena, as a competent amateur guitarist he enrolled in the city’s Società Filarmonica, refounded in 1816, almost immediately after the restoration of ducal rule. The association organised concerts on the occasion of civic and religious festivities and events connected with court life, as well as performances in private residences. Its members included the maestro Antonio Gandini, director of the Ducal Chapel from 1817 to 1842 and a member of the Accademia Filarmonica of Bologna; various aristocrats, such as Count Camillo Sorra and Marquis Carlo Campori; and prominent members of the bourgeoisie, such as the notary Vincenzo Borelli, Menotti’s fellow conspirator in the 1831 uprising, who was executed like him. Menotti’s name also appears in the Catalogo degli Accademici (…) della Reale Accademia dei Filarmonici, another, even more exclusive institution whose distinguished associate members included the composer Bonifacio Asioli of Correggio and Gioachino Rossini.

Another pictorial testimony documents musical activity within the homes of the prosperous bourgeoisie: the Malatesta Family (Modena, Palazzo Comunale), an early masterpiece by the Modenese painter Adeodato Malatesta (1806–1891), the celebrated founder of a school who, from 1839, served as director of the Accademia di Belle Arti of Modena (FIG. 3). A rare example of a conversation piece, or “conversation scene”, in the painting of Modena at the time, it was the result of an exceptionally laborious process that extended over several years, beginning in 1828. The artist reworked the most up-to-date stylistic principles he had absorbed during his studies in Florence and Venice, looking to masters such as Giuseppe Bezzuoli, Odorico Politi and Michelangelo Grigoletti, in a pictorial climate permeated by the influence of Ingres.

The large canvas depicts the thirteen members of the painter’s family, with the artist himself shown at the easel painting a portrait of one of his brothers. Around his father Giuseppe, a captain in the Ducal Guard, and his mother Carlotta Montessori, the children gather, bound to one another by ties of affection expressed through gestures and glances, within a cultural milieu consonant with the Austrian Biedermeier. In particular, in the left-hand corner, a young woman wearing a lustrous red satin dress, her high coiffure held in place by a “Spanish-style” comb, gazes at the viewer while seated and playing the guitar, surrounded by three sisters. She is Lucia, the future wife of the Carpi painter Bernardino Rossi (1803–1865), a fellow student and later rival of her brother-in-law Adeodato, with whom she would compete for the chair of painting at the Academy and for commissions from the ducal court: an “amateur” guitarist, perhaps accompanied by her sisters’ singing during chamber-music entertainments.

In portraiture during the very first decades of the nineteenth century, the guitar thus reappears, often held in women’s arms, and is larger in size than its seventeenth- and eighteenth-century predecessors. It enjoyed renewed popularity following the spread of the guitar-lyre, associated with Neoclassical aesthetics and evocative of archaeological references and myths, from Apollo to Orpheus. Yet, as Carla Costa argues, the guitar-lyre was “uncomfortable to play, forcing the performer into an unnatural pose and requiring a certain skill to hold”. This widespread musical inclination must have been accompanied by the production of instruments of undoubtedly respectable, and at times outstanding, quality: “between Bologna, Modena and Ferrara,” Lorenzo Frignani writes, “we find some of the most significant makers of the period of transition in which the guitar moved from the Baroque to the Romantic era. Guitars by Emilian makers such as Giacomo Zucconi, Filippo Guarmandi and Giuseppe Marconcini are genuine masterpieces in terms of the quality of their raw materials, varnishes and craftsmanship.”

Musical ensembles therefore flourished, often little more than family groups. The Duchess of Modena herself, the cultivated Maria Beatrice Vittoria of Savoy, who married Francis IV of Austria-Este in 1812, had received musical training at the Turin court of her father, Victor Emmanuel I, and was an accomplished amateur harpsichordist. A transcription of a musical piece by Joseph Haydn is preserved in the Biblioteca Estense in Modena, entitled Minuetto estratto da S.A.R. Beatrice Vittoria (…) dal Giuoco Filarmonico del Signor Giuseppe Haydn (BEMo, ms. undated, a.G.2.17).

Another testimony to this musical practice comes from sculpture: a bas-relief, known through an engraving, depicting Saint Cecilia, patron saint of musicians and their associations, sculpted in 1856 by the Modenese Alessandro Cavazza (1824–1873) and presented at the exhibition of the Società d’Incoraggiamento per gli Artisti degli Stati Estensi for the 1854–1856 triennium (FIG. 4). The saint, appearing as a very young girl, is seated playing a small portable organ, dressed with archaizing simplicity, although the artist indulges in abundant drapery in the folds of her outer garment. Stylistically, Cavazza approaches “Purism” and is particularly inspired by Tuscan Quattrocento artists, following the example of his teacher Adeodato Malatesta. Although Cecilia’s ecstatic, indeed transfigured, expression lends the representation a devotional character, the wooded backdrop behind her—derived from works by Malatesta such as the drawing Female Figure Seated beneath a Tree (Modena, private collection), datable to around 1850—introduces a tone of poignant intimacy, almost reminiscent of a Bellinian aria, more suited to a young lady performing in a drawing room.

One of the places devoted to music, also during the Restoration in Modena, was the Collegio dei Nobili, or San Carlo, a prestigious institution founded in 1626 and intended to educate future members of the court and holders of positions of power, welcoming the sons of the aristocracy not only from the local area but also from across Italy and Europe. The cursus studiorum included literary, philosophical and theological studies, as well as scientific and legal subjects. Moreover, in order to complete the worldly education indispensable for those destined to occupy leading positions in society, alongside hunting and theatrical performances there were subjects such as the visual arts and architecture, the chivalric exercises of fencing and riding, and dancing. Music was naturally included as well, both singing and instrumental practice—the violin, guitar, mandolin, oboe, clarinet, piano and other instruments—with performances in “academies” and productions at the Collegio Theatre. It was also customary for the “princes of studies”, that is, boarders awarded for their outstanding academic achievements, to have their portraits painted in the Collegio uniform, together with the distinctions they had received for scholastic merit and objects alluding to the disciplines in which they excelled.

The substantial portrait gallery of the San Carlo thus preserves numerous visual testimonies, including those of the “princes of the arts”, among them music. These portraits were entrusted to the Collegio’s own teachers of painting, such as the mediocre Luigi Girotti, who taught drawing, painting and miniature there from 1822 to 1840. He was succeeded by Luigi Manzini (1805–1866), who after Malatesta was the most prolific and representative artist of Restoration-era art. Restricting the selection to the “princes of the arts” distinguished for their practice of string instruments, the first is the young Marquis Cesare Campori—future essayist and historian of the same Collegio—portrayed by Luigi Girotti in 1832 while displaying one of his graphic works; beside him rests a viola (FIG. 5).

Other boarders devoted themselves successfully to the violin and were portrayed by Luigi Manzini in stately mise-en-scène settings featuring colonnades, theatrical curtains and Arcadian landscapes. In his series of portraits, Manzini displays professional competence and, indeed, an elegance of style that transcends the framework of conventional officialdom prepared for these effigies, whose primary purpose was exemplary and celebratory. There is the Hungarian nobleman Stefano Arpad Piszstory, awarded in 1841, seated beside a music stand with a score, apparently having just interrupted a violin performance (FIG. 6); Count Annibale Cassoli Lorenzotti, outstanding in several disciplines in 1842, has placed his violin on the table (FIG. 7); and Count Leonardo Salimbeni, portrayed in 1849 beside a writing desk, leans with nonchalance against a chair on which he has placed his violin (FIG. 8).

As for the teaching provided at San Carlo, Alessandra Chiarelli noted “the good standard and relative comprehensiveness of the School of Music”, entrusted to experienced teachers who often combined classroom instruction at the Collegio with concerts and entertainments in the halls of the ducal residences. Antonio Pollastri, a viola player in the court orchestra and at the Accademia Filarmonica, as well as organist at the Cathedral from 1780 to 1826, taught at San Carlo during the final years of the eighteenth century and returned there after the Restoration, from 1818 to 1820. A long teaching tenure, from 1821 to 1843, was that of Raimondo Cuboni, a clarinet and viola player in the ducal orchestra between 1828 and 1842, who taught the boarders clarinet, guitar and mandolin. Violin teachers included Marco Seghedoni, from 1818 to 1840, also a court musician, and two members of the celebrated Sighicelli dynasty: Giuseppe taught in the early nineteenth century before retiring in 1814, while his nephew Antonio taught from 1841 to 1858. The latter would serve as principal violinist and conductor at the Teatro Comunale of Modena from 1835 to 1855, and as director of music at the ducal concert from 1836 to 1859—the year in which the dukes left the city—before becoming director of the new Municipal School of Music, the future Liceo Musicale Vecchi-Tonelli.

As we have seen, the rich portrait collection of the Collegio San Carlo preserves numerous visual testimonies relating to musical practice; it is not impossible that further pictorial documents—other “portraits in music”—may yet re-emerge from private collections, helping to provide a fuller definition of this important chapter in the musical and cultural history of Restoration-era Modena.

Bibliographical Note

On Marchioness Anna Campori Seghizzi, see G. Ghiraldi, La Galleria Estense. Doni, lasciti, acquisti (1884–1990), Modena 1990, pp. 50–52; G. Martinelli Braglia, La pittura nel Ducato austro-estense, in Lo Stato di Modena. Una capitale, una dinastia, una città nella storia d’Europa, proceedings of the conference (Modena, 25–28 March 1998), edited by A. Spaggiari and G. Trenti, vol. I, Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali – Direzione generale per gli Archivi, Rome 2001, II, pp. 225–254, at p. 228. Fundamental is the study by R. Castagnetti, Ut pictura musica. Anna Campori Seghizzi e la formazione artistica di una nobildonna tra Sette e Ottocento, in Musica & figura, no. 10, 2023, pp. 105–128, an excellent essay shedding light on these aspects of musical and social culture.

On the miniature depicting Ciro Menotti Playing the Guitar, here attributed to Ippolito Bianchini Ciarlini, see G. Martinelli Braglia, Due miniature di Ippolito Bianchini Ciarlini, in Quaderni della Bassa Modenese, no. 28, Gruppo Studi Bassa Modenese, San Felice sul Panaro (Modena), 1995, pp. 65–70; C. Costa, La chitarra in Italia nella pittura dell’Ottocento, online version: chitarrainitalia.it, 22 June 2010, a study of considerable historical and iconographic interest, in which the earlier attribution of the Portrait of Ciro Menotti to Giuseppe Fantaguzzi, previously proposed by Alfonso Garuti, is reiterated; L. Lorenzini, in Il Museo del Risorgimento di Modena, Bologna 2011, pp. 73–74 and 158 n. 60.

On the Società Filarmonica Modenese, see G. Dotti Messori, Spettacoli e arte a Modena nell’Ottocento. Inventario, Carpi (Modena) 1995, pp. 45–64; M. Lucchi, La Società Filarmonica Modenese, 1816–1857, in Teatro, musica e Comunità. Da Modena capitale a Modena italiana, Carpi (Modena) 1996, pp. 129–142.

Regarding Adeodato Malatesta’s Family Portrait, see G. Martinelli Braglia, La pittura dell’Ottocento in Emilia Romagna, in La pittura in Italia. L’Ottocento, edited by E. Castelnuovo, vol. I, Milan 1991, pp. 245–287, at pp. 249 and 251; G. Martinelli Braglia, La ritrattistica, in Modelli d’arte e di devozione. Adeodato Malatesta 1806–1891, exhibition catalogue (Modena, Foro Boario), Milan 1998, pp. 57–65, at p. 58; and C. Poppi, La famiglia Malatesta, ibid., pp. 122–124. Also, concerning Lucia Malatesta as an “amateur” musician, see L. Silingardi, Bernardino Rossi, in Scene da un salotto dell’Ottocento. Arte modenese dal Ducato all’Unità, edited by G. Martinelli Braglia and L. Silingardi, exhibition catalogue (Carpi, Modena, Palazzo Foresti), Modena 2013, pp. 68–69.

The quotation concerning the quality of guitar production is taken from L. Frignani, La chitarra in Emilia Romagna tra Sette e Ottocento, in Scene da un salotto dell’Ottocento, cited exhibition catalogue, pp. 117–121, at p. 120.

For Alessandro Cavazza’s Saint Cecilia, see L. Silingardi, Dall’ideale classico al bello morale. L’Accademia Atestina di Belle Arti e la scultura a Modena dalla fine del Settecento alla metà dell’Ottocento, in Memorie, Accademia di Scienze, Lettere e Arti di Modena, series VIII, vol. XI, fasc. I, 2008, pp. 209–265, at pp. 257–258.

On teaching at the Collegio San Carlo in Modena, see G. Martinelli Braglia, L’educazione artistica, in Il Collegio e la Chiesa di San Carlo a Modena, edited by D. Benati, L. Peruzzi and V. Vandelli, Modena 1991, pp. 257–265; on the musical activities taking place there, A. Chiarelli, La musica, ibid., pp. 249–255; A. Chiarelli, L’opera al Teatro Comunale, il contesto musicale coevo e la funziona aggregante della corte, in Teatro musica e Comunità da Modena capitale a Modena italiana, Carpi (Modena) 1996, pp. 31–117, at pp. 74–75. See also R. Fiorini, I Sighicelli. Una dinastia di violinisti alla Corte estense, Modena 2011.

Captions

1. Anna Campori Seghizzi, Self-Portrait at the Spinet with her Daughter Giulia, c. 1820. Modena, Galleria Estense.

2. Ippolito Bianchini Ciarlini, Ciro Menotti Playing the Guitar, c. 1820. Modena, Museo del Risorgimento.

3. Adeodato Malatesta, The Malatesta Family, 1828–1834? Modena, Palazzo Comunale.

4. Alessandro Cavazza, Saint Cecilia, 1856, engraving reproducing the bas-relief in a private collection.

5. Luigi Girotti, Portrait of Marquis Cesare Campori, 1832. Modena, Fondazione Collegio San Carlo.

6. Luigi Manzini, Portrait of the Nobleman Stefano Arpad Piszstory, 1841. Modena, Fondazione Collegio San Carlo.

7. Luigi Manzini, Portrait of Count Annibale Cassoli Lorenzotti, 1842. Modena, Fondazione Collegio San Carlo.

8. Luigi Manzini, Portrait of Count Leonardo Salimbeni, 1849. Modena, Fondazione Collegio San Carlo.