Muziek 1772 - 1779

Jean François Janinet made this sanguine drawing of musical instruments sometime in the late eighteenth century. During this era in France, the fine arts and the art of music enjoyed a close and powerful relationship. The Académie Royale de Musique, an institution closely tied to the monarchy, played a vital role in shaping French cultural identity through opera and ballet. Here, Janinet arranges a violin, tambourine, horn, and flute, with flowers and ribbons, into a trophy-like shape, as if to celebrate music as one of the fine arts. The drawing may have been a design for a print or engraving, one of many images that circulated in France at this time, helping to disseminate new aesthetic ideas to a broad public. To fully understand this image, a historian would want to research the social function of music in 18th-century France, and the institutions and patronage systems that supported its creation and performance. The meaning of art is contingent on its social and institutional context.