Cesare Ripa

Cesare Ripa was a 16th-century Italian aesthetician and author of the Iconologia (or in full : Iconologia overo Descrittione Dell’imagini Universali cavate dall’Antichità et da altri luoghi) (Rome, 1593), an influential emblem book.

This book would influence several artists, among them the baroque painter Antonio Cavallucci, whose inspiration for his painting Origin of Music was drawn from this book.