Impact of models of 'roman' antiquity on the musical imaginary of the Early Renaissance: study cases and research prospect

Within the impressive phenomenon of recovery and humanistic reinterpretation of the cultural heritage of antiquity, the discovery of archaeological finds and iconographic evidence of ancient Rome, which aroused the passionate interest of artists, antiquarians and scholars, exerted an extraordinary impact -still largely to be in-depth investigated- also on the elaboration of the Renaissance musical imagery. On the ground of the first results of a wide research (currently in progress), which develops, in the musical direction, the Warburg Institute’s studies on the ancient models emploied by Renaissance artists, this paper will briefly retrace some of the ‘histories of musical images' and their transformations, from the rediscovered antique models, which through copies, reworkings, misunderstandings and additions, gave rise to unprecedented musical icons but also to transpositions from the figurative register to the verbal and performative ones and to the assignment of new symbolic and emblematic meanings to musical figures, instruments and myths. The variety of questions that the recovery and the multifaced reception of ancient images posed to artists and musicians of the early Renaissance and the many perspectives to be explored in the contituation of the research, will be illustrated trough some study cases, exemplary in their peculiarity : the gem of Dioscurides depicting the final stage of the musical challenge between Apollo and Marsyas, the reliefs of the Muses and the Bacchic processions carved on sarcophagus fronts, visible, at the time, in the main Roman basilicas