lira da braccio

[leer-uh duh brah-choh, -chee-oh, lee-rah dah braht-chaw]

noun

plural

liras da braccio ,

plural

lire da braccio .

1. a many-stringed musical instrument of the 15th and 16th centuries, played with a bow and used for polyphonic improvisation.

Word History and Origins

Origin of lira da braccio¹

< Italian: lyre for the arm

Example Sentences

Just 17 inches tall, with a tiny waist and unmuscled thighs and buttocks, this Orpheus looks more like a boy than a man as he sings, dances and plays a Renaissance string instrument called a lira da braccio.

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A further image, an engraving of a man playing a lira da braccio - a Renaissance string instrument - was examined.

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He played a kind of fat violin called the lira da braccio, for which there were not even written scores.

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When he was about 31 and a struggling artist in Florence, wrote his first biographer Giorgio Vasari in 1550, he was invited to the court of Milan – not to paint, but play his customised lira da braccio: “and Leonardo took with him that instrument which he had made with his own hands, in great part of silver, in the form of a horse’s skull – a thing bizarre and new – in order that the harmony might be of greater volume and more sonorous in tone …”

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After his performance on the lira da braccio helped secure him a job at the court of Milan, he stayed there for nearly two decades, and later became court artist to the King of France.

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