Venus Playing the Harp

Cardinal Antonio Barberini, the nephew of Pope Urban VIII, was one of the great patrons of music in 17th-century Rome, and among the musicians in his service was the harpist and composer Marco Marazzoli, known as Marco dell'Arpa, Mark of the Harp. Giovanni Lanfranco painted this canvas for him between 1630 and 1634. The museum records the bargain behind it. Marazzoli gave music lessons to the painter's daughter, and the picture was his payment. Venus, half undressed, with two small boys singing beside her, plays a triple harp, an instrument with three rows of strings that could play every chromatic note. It is a real instrument. Bees, the Barberini emblem, are carved into its wood, and the harp itself survives in Rome's national museum of musical instruments. The museum reads the canvas as a double tribute, to music and to painting, and to the patrons who kept both. When Marazzoli died in 1662, his will left the picture to Cardinal Antonio.