Flageolet in C?
Not on view
The ivory wind instruments in La Hyre’s Allegory of Music are flageolets, or duct flutes, with a whistle mouthpiece similar to a recorder. The flageolet has four finger holes in the front and two in the back. Flageolets were associated with pastoral settings and used to evoke birdsong; in the painting, they may offer a link between musica naturalis and musica artificialis. By the eighteenth century, flageolets were commonly used to teach songs to birds.
Due to rights restrictions, this image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.
