This gilded case encloses an Italian harpsichord of typical design but unusual length. Decorated with a frieze depicting the Triumph of Galatea and supported by three Tritons, the harpsichord originally formed part of Michele Todini's Galeria Armonica and was described in his catalogue of 1676. The flanking figures of Polyphemus playing a bagpipe (Todini invented one like it) and Galatea, holding a lute, were displayed with the harpsichord in front of a "mountain" in which a small pipe organ was concealed. The organ simulated the bagpipe's sound and the harpsichord represented the sound of the lute. Todini designed several such lavish instruments and charged admission from the aristocrats who visited his gallery. The artistic quality of the case ranks it among the finest examples of Roman Baroque decorative art; Todini's ingenuity and search for new forms of instrumental expressivity grew out of the same musical climate that led to the invention of the piano.

Michael Snodin, Nigel Llewellyn, Heyde Herbert in Baroque: Style in the Age of Magnificence 1620-1800. Exhibition catalogue., The Board of Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum. London, 2009, pg. 104, fig. 2.32, ill.

Dottoressa Franca Falletti, Renato Meucci, Gabriele Rossi-Rognoni, Heyde Herbert in Marvels of Sound and Beauty: Italian Baroque Musical Instruments. Exhibition catalogue., Giunti Editore S.p.A.. Milan, 2007, pg. 37, 121-126, fig. 8, ill.

Heyde Herbert. Meraviglie sonore: strumenti musicali del barocco italiano. Ed. Dottoressa Franca Falletti, Renato Meucci, Gabriele Rossi-Rognoni Giunti Editore S.p.A.. Milan, 2007, pg. 37, 121-126, fig. 8, ill.

Libin Laurence. "Keyboard Instruments." Summer. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin (1989), Vol. 47, No. 1, pg. 20-21, ill.

Pollens Stewart S.. "The Pianos of Bartolomeo Cristofori." Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society (1984), vol. X.

Winternitz Emanuel. "The Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instruments: Its Origin and Development." Metropolitan Museum Journal (1970), vol. 3, pg. 348, ill.

Winternitz Emanuel. Musical Instruments of the Western World. McGraw Hill Book Company. New York, Toronto, 1967, pg. 158-159, fig. 57, ill.

Winternitz Emanuel. Keyboard Instruments in The Metropolitan Museum of Art: A Picture Book. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1961, pg. 18-19, fig. 8, ill.

Catalogue of the Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instruments: Historical Groups, Gallery 39. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1905, pg. 126.

Catalogue of the Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instruments: Europe. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1904, vol. I, pg. 267.

Catalogue of Keyboard Instruments. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1903, pg. 83, ill.