Introduction

Myntha is a research database created by art historian Anna Bianco in the context of her doctoral research at Leiden University (Academy of Creative and Performing Arts). Dedicated to the visual culture of the Italian cantata, the project brings together drawings, ornaments, and manuscript decorations preserved in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sources, many of which are now dispersed across libraries, museums, archives, and private collections. Through a relational structure, Myntha reveals connections between images, literary texts, musical compositions, artists, collectors, and graphic sources. By making these relationships visible, the database supports the reconstruction of dispersed corpora, the identification of artistic networks, and the study of interactions among music, art, and collecting practices in early modern Europe. The database continues to grow as an ongoing research project and aims to provide scholars with a tool for exploring the visual dimension of the Italian cantata.