page_title: Diego Ortiz
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Diego Ortiz / Biography
caption_attribution_description: English: Portraits of Diego Ortiz from Trattado de Glossas (left) and from Veronese's "The Wedding at Cana" (right) second unknown viola-gambist
context_page_description: Diego Ortiz was a Spanish composer and music theorist in service to the viceroy of Naples ruled by the spanish monarchs Charles V and Philip II. Ortiz published the first manual on ornamentation for bowed string instruments, and a large collection of sacred vocal compositions.
context_section_description: Very little is known about Ortiz's life. He is believed to have been born in Toledo and probably died in Rome, where its trail is lost.
  In 1553 Ortiz was living in the viceroyalty of Naples. Five years later, the third duke of Alba, Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, appointed him maestro di cappella of the Chapel Royal of Naples. In 1565 Ortiz still held the post under the Viceroy Pedro Afán de Ribera, duke of Alcalá. A recent study (Lafarga, Cháfer, Navalón, and Alejano 2017, 41–59) suggests that Diego Ortiz could have been the model for a very relevant personage in the famous work of Paolo Caliari Veronese "The Wedding at Cana", based on the instrumental ensemble represented by the painter, the edition date of Ortiz's second book Musices liber primus in Venice, the repeated confusions (Hagen and Hagen 2001, 157) and misattributions (Lafarga, Cháfer, Navalón, and Alejano 2017, ch. 6, table I) about this person in the literature down to the present, and the striking resemblance of the painted character with the only known engraved portrait of the musician.
  Recent findings reveal that, after his service to the Spanish Neapolitan Court, as Maestro di Cappella appeared, as "famigliare", in the Colonna's Court in Rome, at least from April 1572 to September 1576 (Morucci 2018, 22, 37n18).
caption: Portraits of Diego Ortiz from Trattado de Glossas (left) and from Veronese's "The Wedding at Cana" second unknown viola-gambist (right)
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