oa Visual Pictorialism in Renaissance Musical Riddles

A fair number of Renaissance riddles are accompanied by an image. Instead of being an ornamental addition, these images are an integral part of the work, as they complement the contents of the music in a fundamental way. In order to explain the intimate connection between music, word, and image in such pieces, I discuss compositions in the form of a circle, a cross, with a coat of arms, and with gaming objects (chessboard and dice). I also sketch the reception of visual pictorialism in treatises on music from the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.