Music Makes Labor Sweet: Empire and Labor in a Sixteenth-Century Flemish Virginal

This thesis uses Hans Ruckers’s (ca. 1545-1598 Antwerp) Double Virginal (1581) to consider how intercultural relationships between Spain, the Netherlands, and Peru impacted its creation and interpretation. Decorated in a traditional Flemish style but featuring portrait medallions of the Spanish monarchs and a provenance in the Viceroyalty of Peru, the virginal asserts the primacy of the Spanish Empire which had annexed the Netherlands and captured indigenous Peruvians through conquest. The analysis in Chapter One demonstrates that the medallions perpetuated European aesthetics and ideals in Peru, to the ostensible political advantage of the Spanish rulers. The second chapter examines how the landscape painting on the virginal emphasizes leisure over labor to reflect the attitude of the courtly audience of the instrument, thereby eliding the workshop labor behind the production of the virginal and the forced labor of the indigenous people whose work enabled the Spanish royal family to commission luxury objects such as this. This paper concludes that Hans Ruckers’s luxurious virginal advanced socio-political power while concealing the invisible labor that was foundational to its creation.