Le zampogne raffigurate sul soffitto ligneo della Cattedrale di Nicosia (Sicilia, XV sec.)

The bagpipes depicted on the wooden ceiling of Saint Nicola Cathedral in Nicosia (Sicily, 15th century) between phylogenesis and ethnography. On the wooden ceiling of the church of St. Nicholas, densely decorated with images datable to around the mid-15th century, six different players of musical instruments are depicted: a double horn, a transverse flute, an obliquely blown wind instrument, a single oboe, a bagpipe with a single chanter and a separate bordone and a bagpipe consisting of two short parallel cylindrical chanters attached to a bag. These instruments give an account of how Sicily at that time was an area dense with relations between Mediterranean culture and European Latinity, in which different musical cultures faced each other. This study deals with the two depictions of bagpipes. The investigation expands to consider these two depictions in the context of the history and ethnography of bagpipes in Europe, and particularly in central and southern Italy and Sicily. The flow of the investigation from Nicosia extends to encompass segments of the history of musical instruments and figurations even earlier, and geographically distant; to Nicosia it returns, to start from there towards the consideration of the structure, function and use of pastoral musical instruments in recent times, and up to the present. Ancient figurative sources are accompanied, in the evaluation of this story, by ethnographic sources; a Calabrian myth relating to the relationship between bagpipes and St. Nicholas will contribute to interpreting the modifications that these instruments have undergone in the course of their history, their relationship with the sacred and with the different religious, linguistic and social communities involved in their history.