What We Know, and What We still Do Not Understand about the Barberini Harp

Synopsis: Historical harpist and researcher Chiara Granata and renowned luthier Dario Pontiggia opened the Convening around the Barberini Harp, a Harfenlabor symposium (December 14-16, 2016 at the Museo Nazionale degli Strumenti Musicali and the Istituto Storico Austriaco in Roma). Their presentation covered the already established facts about the harp, such as the time period in which it could have been constructed, based on technical data (wood examinations), and corrected against historical and iconographical analyses of the Barberini family’s position and cultural policy under Urbano VIII. Crucially, Granata and Pontiggia presented their discoveries, findings and analysis related to new facts about the Barberini Harp that had recently come to light, which they also published in 2015, in the <i>Recercare</i> journal. By integrating research from their respective fields, Granata and Pontiggia arrive at a series of answers as well as open questions. The Barberini Harp represents a great innovation in harp building, as demonstrated through a comparison with the Estense and earlier harps, and yet Pontiggia’s analysis of the Barberini Harp’s technical data suggests that aspects of it are not musically functional. The harp’s avant-garde status suggests it could have been one of a series—new documents reveal it was built in Geronimo Acciari’s workshop in 1632, but no conclusive evidence has been found of other similar harps. Granata and Pontiggia also compare the Barberini Harp with the one depicted by Giovanni Lanfranco, and propose that they are not the same instrument. One of the inconsistencies concerns the Golden Fleece, present on the harp, yet missing in the painting, and prompts both technical and historical analysis: the former tells us it was probably added later; the latter points to when the order might have been bestowed on the Barberini family. This sumptuous musical instrument was also a symbol of power, and as Granata tells us, the only “window" we have onto a story “much broader than we can imagine."