The manuscript volumes of secular cantatas partly reflect the Italian and European aristocratic elite's image in the Baroque era. They reveal the aspirations and the taste of the patrons who required their drafting and copying. 

These manuscripts are tangible evidence of the personal and professional exchanges and relationships between patrons, composers, copyists, musicians, and artists within the courts, where cantatas were composed, played, copied, and donated according to the various occasions. 

Little considered in the literature, the decorations of these manuscripts, in their different forms, are indispensable sources of information. The investigation of this particular repertoire of images makes it possible to recognize the scope of commission and possibly the destination of the volumes they decorate, to update the oeuvre of the artists who made drawings, vignettes, and initials, but also to document the various passages from collection to collection, and therefore to understand the evolution of the reception of the secular cantata repertoire over time, up to the modern era. 

This research aims at highlighting the various types of decoration and the crucial documentary value of these images by investigating some selected case studies. 

• 17e eeuw
• collecting
• drawings
• iconography
• manuscript
• patronage