In Ulysses Almidano Artifoni is a fictional character who takes his name from the owner of the Berlitz School of languages in Trieste, where Joyce taught. The picture is of the man and not the character in Ulysses.

Stephen meets his music teacher, Almidano Artifoni, near Trinity College in the Wandering Rocks, in the sixth of eighteen vignettes. Artifoni urges Stephen to develop his singing voice so one day he might perform professionally. Much of the conversation is in Italian. They take leave of each other when Artifoni runs to get the Dalkey tram:

"Almidano Artifoni, holding up a baton of rolled music as a signal, trotted on stout trousers after the Dalkey tram. In vain he trotted, signalling in vain among the rout of barekneed gillies smuggling implements of music through Trinity gates."

The reader hasn't seen the last of Artifoni since in the final vignette presenting the viceregal cavalcade there is "the salute of Almidano Artifoni's sturdy trousers swallowed by a closing door," which is of course the door of the Dalkey tram. Richard Ellmann in Ulysses on the Liffey mentions this as one of the salutes at the end of the episode and says, "Viceroy and priest are made a little absurd, subjected to the denigrations of comedy. . . . This irreverence intimates that the viceregal glory has not, in its resounding passage, escaped diminution" (77).

In the scene with Stephen and Artifoni, there is the reference, "By the stern stone hand of Grattan," which is an observation of the statue of Henry Grattan, however, the statue is bronze not stone. Could Joyce have made such an egregious error? Weldon Thornton in Voices and Values in Joyce's Ulysses states, "I take these to be errors made by the narrator, and see their presence in the episode as one further means by which Joyce takes the measure of the narrator and shows his fallibility" (140). This seems to beg the question of why Joyce would create a fallible narrator that would make such an error.

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In the Circe episode in one of the dream scenes Artifoni appears again holding "a baton of rolled music" as he says in Italian, "Think it over. You ruin everything." to Stephen. When Florry says, " The bird that can sing and won't sing." he is presenting a proverb that has, in effect, the advice Artifoni has been recommending to Stephen and the proverb is completed with, "must be made to sing."

(ALMIDANO ARTIFONI HOLDS OUT A BATONROLL OF MUSIC WITH
VIGOROUS MOUSTACHEWORK.)
ARTIFONI: CI RIFLETTA. LEI ROVINA TUTTO.
FLORRY: Sing us something. Love's old sweet song.
STEPHEN: No voice. I am a most finished artist. Lynch, did I show
you the letter about the lute?
FLORRY: (SMIRKING) The bird that can sing and won't sing.