Engraving of Calabrian shepherd pipers

Calabrian shepherd pipers playing during the Italian Nativity celebrations, engraved from a painting by the Scottish artist Sir David Wilkie, c. 1827.

The scene shows an Italian Zampogna providing an accompaniment to the ciaramella or piffaro playing the melody before a Shrine around the Christmas Festival. The traditional Christmas Music of the Italian piper caught the attention of European musicians and composers such as Bach an Handel who imitated it in their own words, for example in the Christmas Oratorio and in the Messiah.

This image is on display at the Museum of Piping in Glasgow. The Museum of Piping has been assembled by the National Museums of Scotland from their collections of bagpipes and related material. The Museum describes and illustrates principally the Great Highland Bagpipe and some of its history. Drawing on the collections of the former Royal Scottish Museum, the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland and the Scottish United Services Museum, the displays also look at the richness and variety of the piping traditions of Britain and Europe. Open storage in drawers below the display cases adds more examples and information to the sequence of instruments in the exhibition.

Record details

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• Online ID: 000-000-579-561-C
• Image Rights Holder: National Museums Scotland
• Project: The Bagpipe Collection
  Project description   View all records in project
• Ref: National Museums Scotland  Bagpipe Archive 2.13
• Date: c.1827 (date of painting)
  
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• Subject:
• Who: Museum of Piping, Glasgow (place of display)
  Sir David Wilkie (artist)
  
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• Description: Engraving of Calabrian shepherd pipers.
  
• References:
  • Cheape, Hugh,. The Book of the Bagpipe. Belfast: Appletree Press Ltd, 1999, p. 51.
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