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The present study consists of a comparison and discussion of the works of Benedetto Floriani, one of several keyboard instrument makers known to have been active in Venice during the third quarter of the sixteenth century.1 Three spinette poligonali inscribed with his name are currently known to survive, and these span the relatively short period 1568-1572. In addition, there are two unsigned instruments that may be attributed to him: a virginal (first attributed to Floriani in 1991) preserved at the Musikinstrumenten Museum Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin; and one recently discovered in Florence. A comparative study of the decoration, dimensions, string scalings and case moulding has been carried out in order to assess the consistency in design of the five instruments, and to interpret the existing differences, in an attempt to combine methods mostly elaborated by keyboard instrument scholars in the past two decades towards an organic method of supporting the attribution of this model of instruments.2 No archival evidence about Benedetto Floriani has been found in the Venetian archives, despite the extensive research carried out by Stefano Toffolo,3 but three documents from the eighteenth century mention his name: two refer to a harpsichord - not surviving - dated 1568, that was modified by Bartolomeo Cristofori prior to 1708 by closing the second rose towards the end of the tail;4 and one mid-eighteenth-century document mentions Benedetto, together with an otherwise unknown Domenico Floriani, in a list of Ti maestri più eccellenti nel far cembali' (most excellent masters in harpsichord making).5
The earliest of the signed Floriani instruments, dated 1568, is now preserved in Florence, at the Collection of the Conservatory of Music, Musical Instrument Department of the Galleria dell'Accademia, inv. no.1988/101 (see Figure 1 in the colour section). It has been documented since 1911, when it was described in the first catalogue of the collection, unfortunately without reference to its provenance.6 However, it was probably unknown in 1885, when Luigi Francesco Valdrighi, usually impressive in his documentation, published the earliest modern mention of this maker in his Nomocheliurgografia antica e moderna.7 Here, the reference to an instrument by Benedetto Floriani made in Venice in 1571 probably refers to the instrument now in Leipzig, at the Museum für Musikinstrumente der Universität, inv. no.33 (see Figure 2 in the...