Musical classicisms in Italy before the madrigal

Modern evaluations of the relation between music and the fashion for the antique in Italy in the period before the madrigal have tended to proceed from the perspective of intellectual history. This article aims to offer an alternative—although certainly related—perspective, by exploring the circulation of musical classicisms in Italian visual and material culture, roughly from 1450 to 1520. This period saw the rise to prominence in Italy of both commercial text printing and other multiple-copy formats such as the art print, the medal, the bronze plaquette, and a little later historiated maiolica. These technologies offer a particularly compelling lens through which to examine musical encounters with classical antiquity that were not motivated by an expert professional interest in either music or classical texts, but rather characterized by an investment in antiquity as a fashionable source of cultural capital.