Michelangelo: Doni Tondo

 

This year I have been reprising my interpretations of some of the most famous and mysterious paintings of the Renaissance. I originally concentrated on the Venetian Renaissance but in 2015 took a closer look at Michelangelo's Doni Tondo. Below is the first part of a three part essay that first appeared in 2015.  The full paper can now be found at academia.edu. I still believe the painting should be labelled, "Behold the Lamb of God."

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Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo is one of the greatest masterpieces of the High Renaissance. It is his only surviving panel painting and now hangs in the Uffizi in its original frame. Most scholars date it somewhere between Michelangelo’s completion of the David in 1504 and his departure from Florence to Rome in 1506. Like many of the masterpieces of this era, it has elicited many different interpretations. At first glance it appears to be simply a traditional rendering of the Holy Family but, on closer inspection, a number of questions arise. 

In the foreground Mary, Joseph, and the Infant Jesus are situated in a landscape. But what is going on? Is Mary handing the Child to Joseph, or is Joseph handing the Child to Mary? Why does Mary look as she does with muscular arms shockingly uncovered? What is Joseph doing in the painting? Why, despite tradition, has he been brought so prominently into the center to play an apparently key role? What is the young John the Baptist doing behind a parapet or wall in the midground? Finally, who are the five male nudes in the background, and why are they there?

As far as the first question is concerned, I originally agreed with Giorgio Vasari’s view that Mary “presents” the child to Joseph. In his life of Michelangelo, Vasari wrote

There came to Angelo Doni, a Florentine citizen and a friend of Michelagnolo. who much delighted to have beautiful things both by ancient and by modern craftsmen, a desire to possess some work by Michelagnolo; wherefore that master began for him a round picture containing a Madonna, who, kneeling on both knees, has an Infant in her arms and presents Him to Joseph, who receives him. Here Michelagnolo expresses in the turn of the head of the Mother of Christ and in the gaze of her eyes, which she keeps fixed on the supreme beauty of her Son, her marvelous contentment and her lovingness in sharing it with that saintly old man, who receives Him with equal affection, tenderness, and reverence, as may be seen very readily in his countenance, without considering it too long. [i]

Most modern scholars disagree with Vasari’s opinion. In a 1968 essay Mirella Levi d’Ancona, because of her belief that Michelangelo was supporting a Dominican view of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, saw the Child raising himself out of his mother’s body as if he was actually being born and sanctifying his mother at the moment of His birth. She wrote,

The Christ child—God incarnated in human form—is issuing from the body of the Virgin to take his human form, and at the same time blesses his mother, to bestow on her a special sanctification. [ii]

On the other hand, in 2003 Timothy Verdon believed that the source of the Doni Tondo could be found in Marsilio Ficino’s Neoplatonic concept of three kinds of love. As a result, Verdon argued that not only was Mary receiving the Child but that the man in the painting was not even St. Joseph. 

the old man in the Tondo Doni seems to flout the tradition of a passive Joseph, separate from Mary, for the simple reason that he is not Joseph: he does not represent the surrogate father, but the real one, God, from whom the Son proceeds ab aeterno. Vasari was mistaken when he said that the old man “takes” the baby from Mary; it is rather the baby who emerges from the Father, with his left foot on the Father’s thigh and his little hands in Mary’s hair to maintain his balance. The Baby, with his right foot on Mary’s arm, is about to push himself up and over, in order to descend into the Virgin’s womb.[iii]

I now believe that neither view is correct. Vasari was often mistaken or ill informed but he was a close friend and confidant of Michelangelo. It would be almost the height of temerity to reject his eyewitness description of the central feature in this painting. Nevertheless, it would appear that he did not take more than a glance at the painting. For example, he saw the Madonna kneeling although she is obviously sitting. 

It is so easy to overlook or ignore important and obvious details in a Renaissance masterpiece, but there are significant elements in the Doni Tondo that call for a new interpretation. Rather than handing off the Child to Joseph, I would argue that Mary is actually elevating the body of her Son in the same way that a priest elevates the Host or Body of Christ at the Consecration of every Mass. The keys to this interpretation are the hands of Mary, and the posture of Joseph.

The position of Mary’s hands and fingers cannot allow her to either hand the Infant Jesus off to Joseph or take the Child from him. As I pondered the painting, I asked myself where had I seen hands like that before. Eventually, I realized that Mary’s hands and fingers resembled a priest’s at the Consecration. After the Second Vatican council liturgical norms in the Catholic church were somewhat relaxed, but I remembered from my childhood that the priest would take the host between the thumb and forefinger of both hands before and during the elevation. Naturally, his other fingers would then close or cup in the shape of Mary’s as he raised the host. Since the priest’s back was to the congregation, he would raise the Host high above his head and look at it intently in the same way Mary does in the Doni Tondo.

In the art of the Renaissance it was common to equate the infant Jesus lying on his mother’s lap, or on the ground surrounded by various worshippers, with the Eucharistic host. The Portinari Altarpiece is one of the best examples. The infant Jesus lies on the ground surrounded by worshippers including angels wearing the vestments of altar servers. In Franciscan theology, for example, even when Mary was holding her infant Son on her lap, she was the altar on which the Eucharist rested.

Hugo van der Goes: Portinari Altarpiece

Verdon noted that his view partly arose out of a conversation with the late famed art historian Leo Steinberg. In 1974 Steinberg published a brief essay on the Doni Tondo in Vogue magazine. Steinberg’s reputation was so great that practically every commentator on the Doni Tondo refers to the Vogue essay. In that essay Steinberg saw deliberate ambiguity in Michelangelo’s famous painting that makes it very difficult to determine who is handing the Child to whom. But he did find four levels of meaning including a Eucharistic one. Here is his ending. 

Christian tradition made the Virgin’s identity interchangeable with Ecclesia; and it made Joseph the typus apostolorum, protector and spouse of the Church, “guardian of the living bread for himself and the whole world” (St. Bernard). And as the maternal function of the Church culminates in the Mass, which engenders the sacramental body of Christ, so in the tondo, the unprecedented pitch of the Child above the Madonna prefigures the Elevation of the Host, of the Corpus Verum, the Eucharist—literally, a “Thanksgiving.”[iv

Steinberg did note the “furled fingers” of Mary but only concluded that since no woman would ever receive a child in that way, “she must have just let it go.” So, in his opinion, the raising of the Child only “prefigures" the Elevation of the Host….”

I would also like to point out that the garments of Mary indicate a priestly role. Michelangelo depicted her in her traditional red dress with her blue cloak or mantle draped over her legs. But there is also a green cloth wrapped around her on which a book, perhaps a Missal, rests. Green is still the color of the priest’s vestments on most of the Sundays of the Church year.

The concept of St. Joseph as protector and spouse of the Church is sufficient to explain his prominent position in the Eucharistic celebration. The man in Michelangelo’s tondo bears all the characteristics of St. Joseph as he was portrayed during the early decades of the sixteenth century. Joseph was increasingly depicted as a virile man quite capable of protecting his family especially on the flight into Egypt. One just has to look at Raphael’s Sposalizio in the Brera. In addition, the purple and gold coloring of his garments also identifies Joseph as from the line of King David.

The posture of Joseph also confirms his identification. He is behind Mary and the Body of Christ. At the consecration of the Mass the sacrifice is offered to the Father above at the heavenly altar. Also, we see that Joseph is not standing since he does not tower over the sitting Madonna. Is he squatting awkwardly? Is he sitting on a hidden stool? We can only see his right leg but it is bent at the knee. It would appear that Joseph is kneeling or genuflecting as all worshippers do as the priest elevates the Body of Christ. At the same time his left hand is placed firmly on the Infant’s chest. Is he actually receiving Communion or just indicating the central role of the Church in the acceptance of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist? 


Even before the Reformation doubts had arisen about the Real Presence. The building of the great Cathedral in Orvieto in response to the Eucharistic miracle at Bolsena is one example of the Church's response to these doubts. Raphael's so-called Disputa in the Vatican Stanze is another response. 

Subsequent posts will discuss the young John the Baptist in the mid-ground, and the five nude men in the background.


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*This post originally appeared on Giorgione et al... on May 31, 2015.

[i] Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, translated by Gaston du C. De Vere, with an introduction and notes by David Ekserdjian, Everyman’s Library, 1996, v. II, p. 656.

[ii] Mirella Levi D’Ancona: "The Doni Madonna by Michelangelo: An Iconographic Study." Reprinted in Michelangelo, Selected Scholarship in English, edited with Introduction by William E. Wallace, New York and London, 1995, V. 1.Life and Early Works, p. 404. This paper originally appeared in the Art Bulletin in 1968.

[iii] Timothy Verdon, Mary in Florentine Art, Firenze, 2003, pp. 97-98.

[iv] Leo Steinberg, “Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo,” Vogue, December, 1974, pp. 138.

Titian: Pastoral Concert, Bibliography

I originally published some bibliographical notes on Titian's Pastoral Concert on this site on May 26, 2012 in preparation for publishing online my interpretation of the famous painting as Titian's "Homage to the Recently Deceased Giorgione."  This year in my previous two posts I have reposted my interpretation, as well as a comparison of it with that of Dr. Joost-Gaugier who also sees the painting as Titian's Homage to Giorgione.To complete the discussion I would like to re-post the bibliographical information here.

The December 1957 issue of The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism featured an essay on the painting by Philipp Fehl entitled, “The Hidden Genre: a Study of the Concert Champetre in the Louvre.”[i] In his study Fehl limited himself to a discussion of the two female nudes in the painting.

My present proposition is simply this: the two women are not human. They are nymphs of the wood who, having been attracted by the music and the charm of the young men, have joined their concert. They are as invisible to the young men as they are, in the full beauty of the landscape which they bodily represent, visible to us. [157]

From this insight that was based primarily on an extensive analysis of literary sources, Fehl drew the following conclusion about the painting.

The picture, if we choose to look at it from this point of view, is now a true pastoral, in the spirit of the idylls of Theocritus. [157]

He did admit that a really convincing proof would require a poem or text which, unfortunately, he had not been able to find.

However, a year later famed Art historian Edgar Wind seemed to add his weight to Fehl’s description of the two nudes in Pagan Mysteries of the Renaissance.[ii]

The same 'philosophy of clothes' can be studied in Giorgione's 'Fete Champetre' in the Louvre. The nymphs, distinguished from the musicians by the absence of clothes, are meant to be recognized as 'divine presences', superior spirits from whose fountain the mortal musicians are nourished…

Wind’s comment was only in a footnote and one would suspect that he came upon Fehl’s interpretation while his own book was in process of publication.

In any event, in 1959 Patricia Egan took Fehl’s analysis a step further in an essay, “Poesia and the Fete Champetre” that appeared in the Art Bulletin.[iii] Egan also concentrated on the two nude females, but she regarded them as muses rather than nymphs. They are sister beings who “constitute the first and strongest section of the picture.”

the left side comprises the water-pouring “muse,” the fine young lute-player, the white gabled building by the lake, and the farther landscape; the enclosed landscape on the right side contains the flute-playing ”muse,” the shepherd boy, the farmhouse, the grove, and the goatherd with his flock. [305]

Egan found a contemporary “Tarocchi” card with an image identified as “Poesia”. Although clothed, she carried the pitcher and pipe (aulos) seen in the “Pastoral Concert”.

Tarocchi card C-27

Entitled Poesia, the girl is seated beside a fountain on grass or leaves, using one hand to play a flute while with the other she empties a pitcher into a small body of water at her side….If we accept this degree of meaning to be implicit in the scene, we may add, tentatively, to the titles already bestowed on the picture, that of “Allegory of Poetry.” [304]

Egan admitted that the connections in the Tarocchi card have become somewhat weaker in the “Pastoral Concert.” “Poesia” has “twinned”, and each twin performs one of the actions depicted on the playing card.

Poesia as the personification of academic eloquence has twinned, and her actions, though simultaneous, no longer depend so closely on one another. [312]

Although Egan identified the nudes as muses and not as nymphs, she agreed with Fehl: the “muses’ belong to one world, the boys to another, the world of Poetry includes them all.” [312]

In 2006 Jaynie Anderson, in the catalog entry for the Bellini, Giorgione, Titian exhibition jointly sponsored by Washington’s National Gallery and Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, noted the contributions of Fehl and Egan, and claimed that their observations about the unworldly nature of the two nudes were now generally accepted by scholars.[iv] I fully agree and believe that in no way can these two females be considered as girl friends or prostitutes.

Note: Since I originally wrote the above words, I discovered the following sources: 

Joost-Gaugier, Christiane L. The mute poetry of the Fete Champetre: Titian’s memorial to Giorgione. Gazette des Beaux Arts, January 1999, Issue 1560, pp. 1-14.  After my initial intuition I  discovered that famed art historian S. J. Freedberg had also seen the painting as a homage to Giorgione, and noted that in my paper.  S.J. Freedberg, Painting in Italy, 1500-1600, London, 1990, pp. 139-140.

Freedberg just provides a brief mention but Joost-Gaugier's paper is detailed and extensive, and argues that the painting is indeed Titian's Memorial to Giorgione. In my previous post on this site, I have discussed her paper and pointed out areas of agreement and disagreement with my own interpretation.

I also reposted my interpretation on this site earlier this month. My interpretation can also be found   on academia.edu.  I agree with Dr. Joost-Gaugier that the painting is Titian's memorial or homage to Giorgione but disagree with her description of the figures in the painting. 

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[i]Philipp Fehl: “The Hidden Genre: A Study of the Concert Champetre in the Louvre,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, XVI, 2, 1957, pp. 154-168.

[ii] Edgar Wind: Pagan Mysteries of the Renaissance, New Haven, 1958. P.123, n.1.

[iii] Patricia Egan: “Poesia and the Fete Champetre”, The Art Bulletin, Vol. 41 (Dec. 1959), pp. 303-313.

[iv] Brown, David Alan, and Ferino-Pagden, Sylvia, Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and the Renaissance of Venetian Painting, Washington, 2006. Catalog entry #31 by Jaynie Anderson.  

Titian: Pastoral Concert continued

In my last post I discussed my interpretation of Titian's Pastoral Concert which I originally published in 2013. This post is designed to draw attention to an interpretation of the Fete Champetre or Pastoral Concert published in 1999 by Dr. Christiane Joost- Gaugier. The article, “The mute poetry of the Fete champetre: Titian’s memorial to Giorgione” appeared in the January 1999 issue of the Gazette des Beaux Arts. As the title suggests, Dr. Joost-Gaugier attributed the famous painting to Titian and regarded it as a memorial to the recently deceased Giorgione.

I originally published my interpretation of the painting on my now defunct website, MyGiorgione, in May, 2013. Since then, I have published the full paper it on academia.edu. I believed then and still do that the famous painting that hangs in the Louvre is indeed a homage by the young Titian to Giorgione. Only afterwards did I discover that Dr. Joost-Gaugier had seen the same thing back in 1999. *

Initially, this discovery was embarrassing since I should have found Dr. Joost- Gaugier's interpretation earlier. However, it became somewhat comforting to find that I had come independently to a similar conclusion with someone of her stature, knowledge, and experience. I also found that the technical evidence of the underpainting presented in her article also supported my paper. 

Nevertheless, while I agree with much of Dr. Joost-Gaugier's analysis, I do have disagreements with some of the conclusions she drew from her insights. I will explore both the areas of agreement and disagreement in this review article. 

In an abstract to her paper Dr. Joost-Gaugier laid out her thesis.

This paper will attempt to propose a new reading of this most unusual, indeed unique, picture which will suggest that it was initiated by Giorgione as a poesia based on an antique theme but incorporating his views about painting and, after his death completed by the grieving young Titian who, inspired by Virgil, turned the painting into a memorial to his beloved master who is portrayed as the center around which the entire composition and subject revolve. It will also suggest that Titian valued this painting as a private painting. (2)

Dr. Joost-Gaugier observed that the focus of the painting, despite the scholarly interest in the two nude women, was the young man in the center clothed in red. 

Indeed, the brilliance of his presence makes it clear that he, and not the nude women who have so intrigued former viewers is at the center of the painting…. In contrast to the soft beiges, browns, and olive colors which prevail elsewhere in the painting, the glowing reds of his mantle and hat accentuate the centrality and importance of his presence. (5)

She identified the man in red as Giorgione but saw signs, as I did years later, that he has died. 

Contrary to what many observers have assumed, the brilliantly colored young man at the center of the painting is not playing his instrument. Indeed, his instrument has no strings, a fact that has gone unnoticed and which is assured by the evidence of x-rays. Nor does the protagonist of the painting sing. His lips are closed. In fact, his head is averted so as to cause his features to be lost in deep shadow and darkness. From him there is only silence. He is playing but not playing, singing but not singing. He is seen but not seen. 

The other young man, dressed in plain, rustic garb would then possibly be Titian.

The suggested identification of the young lutist as Giorgione leads to another possibility. Perhaps his companion—who focuses his respect as well as his energies on the main actor—is a self-portrait of the younger Titian who expresses his devotion in a moment of quiet reverence. (6)

In regard to the two nude women, Dr. Joost-Gaugier differed from earlier scholars who regarded them as wood nymphs or muses invisible to the men. For her, the four figures in the painting are “distinctly human beings.” Moreover, both women are the same.

The same figure is represented from the front…and from the back, suggesting different modes or tempos for the engagement of the beholder. (4)

She then speculated that the woman was actually Giorgione’s lover who also died of the plague, and that Giorgione had originally begun the painting in her memory. 

The fact that the two women appear to have been painted from the same model suggests that they may refer to the woman with whom Giorgione had fallen in love shortly before his death. (6)

In summing up Dr. Joost Gaugier believed that while the painting has an Arcadian mood based possibly on an eclogue by Virgil, Giorgione had begun the painting shortly before his own death of the plague as a poetic memorial of his recently deceased lover but that Titian then altered it into a memorial of Giorgione himself. 

Taken together, the above observations show that this painting is neither a “Fete Champetre” nor a “Pastoral Concert, nor a (live) concert at all. They suggest rather a funeral motif.

In my paper I also saw that the elegantly dressed man with the lute is Giorgione, and the other more simply dressed man is Titian. I agree that the painting is Titian’s homage to the recently deceased Giorgione. 

I agree that the absence of strings on the lute is a sign that Giorgione has died and will play no more. I also agree that Giorgione’s face in shadow is another sign of death. Titian would use it later in a crucifixion scene. I went a little further though in seeing another sign of death in the pouring action of the nude on the left. I see her pouring Giorgione’s spirit into the well. 

Moreover, I believe that the dark sky in the background is also a sign of death. I did not mention it in my paper because I could not be certain that the dark sky was original or just the result of aging. Dr. Joost-Gaugier’s examination of the underpainting indicates that the original sky is cloudy and certainly not the appropriate background for a pleasant pastoral idyll.

I agree that the two nude women are one and the same, but I do not believe that they are human. I follow Fehl, Wind, and Egan in this regard but go further and argue that she is Euterpe, the muse of lyric poetry. **

I find it difficult to accept the suggestion that the painting was initially begun by Giorgione as a memorial to his deceased lover, or that the unfortunate woman is depicted in the painting. According to Vasari’s sources, Giorgione died of the plague after contact with his lover. Death for both of them would have been rapid and within days of each other.  He would have been in no shape physically or emotionally to commence a tribute to his lover. A recent discovery indicated that Giorgione spent his last days away from his studio in quarantine on an island in the lagoon.

Moreover, if he meant the painting as a tribute to his lover, why would he include Titian in the painting? Why would he have shown the young woman handing her flute to Titian? According to Dr. Joost-Gaugier all the figures in the painting are original. Scientific analysis of the underpainting reveals that only the standing nude was altered.

I can accept the idea that Titian might have kept this painting in his studio for years but that could mean that he revised and retouched it at a later date using paints mixed years later than 1510. Given this fact, I do not believe the scientific evidence firmly establishes a dual authorship.

I do believe that Titian painted in the style of Giorgione as an act of homage to his recently deceased friend. I would also not be surprised if Titian used Giorgione cartoons. I believe that the young Titian acted more as a colorist than a designer on the walls of the Fondaco de Tedeschi with the result that onlookers mistook his work for Giorgione’s. 

Rather than an Arcadian poesia in an antique style, I believe that Titian used the biblical story of David and Jonathan to express the depth of his sorrow at Giorgione’s passing. Jonathan was the son and heir of King Saul, and David was a young shepherd boy. They became the closest of friends during Israel’s struggle with the Philistines. 

Titian dressed Giorgione in the finery befitting a King’s son while he clothed himself in rustic garb. In my interpretation the shepherd in the mid-ground would then be David’s father left behind with his flocks, and not a typical gamboling Arcadian shepherd. 

Renaissance art historians never tire of trying to find sources in ancient literature for paintings whose subjects mystify them. They go to great lengths to show that painters like Giorgione and Titian were familiar with these texts even though there is little evidence that they could even read Latin. For some reason they find it difficult to imagine that the sources of many of these beautiful paintings are in the Bible and the apocryphal legends that embellished the sparse biblical account. ***

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* Joost-Gaugier, Christiane L. The mute poetry of the Fete Champetre: Titian’s memorial to Giorgione. Gazette des Beaux Arts, January 1999, Issue 1560, pp. 1-14.  After my initial intuition I  discovered that famed art historian S. J. Freedberg had also seen the painting as a homage to Giorgione, and noted that in my paper.  S.J. Freedberg, Painting in Italy, 1500-1600, London, 1990, pp. 139-140.

** Euterpe was also seen by Ethanan Motzkin in "The Meaning of Titian’s Concert champetre in the Louvre.” Gazette des Beaux Arts, 116 (1990), pp. 51-66.

*** The late Ross J. Kilpatrick, a classicist, argued that instead of Virgil, the source of the Pastoral Concert could be found in Horace and Propertius. "Horatian Landscape in the Louvre's "Concert Champetre," Artibus et Historiae, Vol. 21, No. 41 (2000), pp. 123-131. He included a discussion of Dr. Joost-Gaugier's interpretation. 

Titian: Pastoral Concert or Homage to Giorgione

 Since 2013 I have argued that the so-called Pastoral Concert that hangs in the Louvre should be recognized as Titian's Homage to the Recently Deceased Giorgione. The full paper can now be found on academia.edu.Below find a shortened version that first appeared on Giorgione et al... back in 2013 with some more recent notes. ***************** 

Titian: Pastoral Concert (Louvre)

The “Pastoral Concert” or “Concert Champetre” that now hangs in the Louvre is universally recognized as one of the world’s great masterpieces. Usually dated around 1510-1511 it is surrounded, like other famous products of the Venetian Renaissance, by an aura of mystery and enigma. Not only has scholarly opinion been divided about whether to attribute the painting to Giorgione or Titian, but also no one has been able to come up with a plausible explanation of the subject or meaning of the painting. In this post I present a synopsis of a “working hypothesis” that provides a new interpretation of the subject of the "Pastoral Concert" and also resolves the question of attribution. I argue that Titian used the famous Biblical story of Jonathan and David to provide a framework for a personal homage to Giorgione, his recently deceased mentor and friend. 

Before going any further it should be noted that my reading is speculative and unorthodox. As far as I know a painterly homage would be unique and unprecedented in the art of the Venetian Renaissance.* Nevertheless, there is no settled opinion on the subject of the “Pastoral Concert”, and a Titian homage to Giorgione answers most of the questions that have surrounded the painting. **

This interpretation explains why Titian put so many Giorgionesque elements in the painting, but also identifies the four main figures in the painting as well as their relationship with one another. The man on the left wearing finery and holding the lute is Giorgione. Many of the features of Giorgione that Vasari mentions in his short biography can be seen in this young man. Moreover, three here-to-fore inexplicable details in the painting indicate that Giorgione is dead: his face is in shadow; the lute has no strings; and the nude on the left is pouring into a well. ***

This interpretation then identifies the young rustic on the right as Titian. He depicts himself as Giorgione’s social inferior but also as his successor. His closeness to the other man as well as his connection with the flock in the mid ground brings to mind the biblical story of David and Jonathan. Titian identifies himself with David, the soul-mate and successor of Jonathan.

Cima da Conegliano: David and Jonathan
National Gallery, London, c. 1506-10.

My interpretation agrees with those scholars who have observed that the two female nudes in the painting are muses who are invisible to the two men. Although muses are the source of inspiration, the men are oblivious of their presence. Indeed, I argue that the two nudes are the same muse. She is Euterpe, the muse of lyric poetry and music. The standing nude is pouring Giorgione’s spirit out, but on the right she is looking directly at Titian.

To express his homage to the deceased Giorgione, Titian incorporated many Giorgionesque elements into the painting. Practically everything that Vasari said about Giorgione can be found in this painting. The most telling evidence is the reference to the story of the paragone where Giorgione claimed supremacy for painting over sculpture since he could portray every aspect of a figure on a flat surface. In one glance the viewer sees the front, the back and the profile of the nude Euterpe.

Many have seen that the relationship between the two young men in the “Pastoral Concert” is the key to the painting. Some have even seen a strong trace of  “homo-eroticism.” In my opinion the bond between two young warriors, or two young artists is sufficient to explain the painting. Look at the painting and consider David’s lament on hearing the news of the death of Jonathan.

O Jonathan, in your death I am stricken
I am desolate for you, Jonathan my brother.
Very dear to me you were,
Your love to me more wonderful
than the love of a woman. 

 2 Samuel  1:19-26

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* I originally wrote these words in May, 2013. Only in 2020 did I discover that art historian Christiane Joost-Gaugier had seen the painting as Titian's homage to the deceased Giorgione back in 1999. (Joost-Gaugier, Christiane L. "The mute poetry of the Fete Champetre: Titian’s memorial to Giorgione." Gazette des Beaux Arts, January 1999, Issue 1560, pp. 1-14.)

Initially, this discovery was somewhat embarrassing since I should have found Dr. Gaugier's interpretation earlier. However, it became somewhat comforting to find that I had come independently to a similar conclusion with someone of her stature, knowledge, and experience. Nevertheless, while I agree with much of Dr. Gaugier's analysis, I do have disagreements with some of the conclusions she drew from her insights. I discussed the areas of agreement and disagreement in a subsequent post.

** For a bibliographical essay on the painting see the post on Giorgione et al... dated 6/17/2013.

*** Since 2013, I have come to recognize that the dark clouds in the background are also a sign of the death of Giorgione. 

Titian: Presentation of the Virgin

  Today I republish my review article on David Rosand's magisterial interpretation of Titian's  Presentation of the Virgin. Despite the depth and comprehensiveness of Rosand's interpretation, I did disagree with him on one point. Back in 2012, I argued that the old woman featured prominently in the foreground was Anna, the prophetess, who appeared in the biblical account of the Presentation of Mary's infant son. I include my opinion at the end of this review.  

David Rosand’s essay, “Titian’s Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple and the Scuola della Carita” appeared in the Art Bulletin in March, 1976. * It would be hard to imagine a more thorough and better researched paper than this one by the late Columbia professor who during his long career became one of the leaders in the field of the Venetian Renaissance.

In his essay Rosand proposed to “take a new look at Titian’s painting, to consider it on its own terms, the details of the composition as well as its broader contexts….” He examined the patronage, the social function of the picture, the position of the image within the history of its type, the relationship of the picture to its physical site, as well as the conditions under which it was to be seen. 

He stressed that he was departing from the traditional nineteenth and early twentieth century view of the painting as an example of Renaissance naturalism with little attention to its iconography. Rosand’s study is primarily iconographical. He demonstrated that practically every detail in the painting is important, and that all the details fit together to form a unified whole. 

In this brief review I would like to highlight some of the most significant iconographic details that Rosand explored as a guide to viewing the painting. I would also like to disagree with his analysis on one significant point.  

Titian’s painting is still in the place in which it was originally meant to be seen although the nature of the site has changed around it. Venice’s Accademia, its famous art museum, was originally the church of S. Maria della Carita, the home of the Confraternity della Carita, one of the leading social and charitable organizations in sixteenth century Venice. 

Around 1534 the confraternity commissioned Titian to do a painting of the Presentation of the Virgin for a particular wall in one of its rooms. The Presentation was a very popular subject in Renaissance Venice both before and after the Reformation. The subject was based on the legendary story of Joachim and Anne, the parents of Mary. Giotto had immortalized the story back in the thirteenth century on the walls of the Scrovegni or Arena chapel in nearby Padua.

According to the legend Joachim was a prosperous sheep raiser whose offering was rejected by the priests of the Temple because he and his wife were childless, a sign of divine disfavor. Banned from the Temple, Joachim left his wife and went to live in the fields with his shepherds and flocks. However, he made an offering in the wilderness and not only was it accepted by God, but he was also told to return home to his wife, Anne, who had also been given a sign that they will be blessed with a child.  

They met at the Golden Gate of the city, exchanged a kiss, and Anne conceived and bore a daughter Mary. In thanksgiving the joyous couple resolved to offer their child to service in the Temple.

The offering of the child is the focal point of Titian’s painting although Titian depicts her ascending the steps seemingly on her own volition in much the same way that she appears to rise on her own in his earlier Assunta. Rosand noted that Titian surrounded the young Mary with “a full mandorla of golden light”, something unprecedented and full of meaning.

the Virgin does indeed rival and outshine the natural light entering through the windows of the room; she is the light beyond the light of nature, a radiance more brilliant than the sun….The wisdom texts, the basis of the Marian celebration, afford then a means of reading Titian’s Presentation, allowing us to determine the significance of many of its supposedly merely picturesque details within the context of a controlling thematic structure. [68]

Instead of mere naturalistic, pictorial details, the sunlight, the clouds, and the mountains in the background all relate to the theme of the painting: “the diffusion of … divine light into the world." 

Rising behind the pyramid is a great cumulus cloud, its luminous shape dominating the left side of the canvas….one ought to expect this form, moving so majestically over the landscape, to assume a meaning beyond its obvious naturalistic function. And I would suggest that this meaning derives from the same wisdom texts with which Titian was so evidently familiar. {Ecclesiasticus 24: 5-7} “as a cloud I covered all the earth: I dwell in the highest places, and my throne is a pillar of cloud.” In this form the divinity presides over Titian’s landscape, becoming with the pyramid a monumental hieroglyph of the divine immanence, while on the opposite side of the picture the Virgin’s radiance speaks of its ultimate incarnation for the salvation of mankind. [70]

In a section entitled “Dramatis Personae”, Rosand identified the various onlookers to the Virgin’s ascent up the steps of the Temple. He rejected the opinion of Vasari and others that these were merely portraits of contemporaries including Titian himself. The main characters relate to the theme of the painting and derive from scriptural sources.

Oddly enough Joachim and Anne, the parents of Mary, while centrally placed, are somewhat obscured. Joachim stands with his back to the viewer with his hand on his wife’s shoulder. Anne wears a little cap and certainly does not stand out as do other women in the painting.

Rosand followed the lead of Leo Steinberg in identifying the young woman dressed in gold and white at the foot of the steps as Mary’s elder cousin, Elizabeth, the future mother of John the Baptist.  

 

The beautiful young woman at the foot of the stairs, so often carelessly identified as Anna, acquires by her prominence within the composition a rather distinctive significance…. care has been taken to distinguish her from the rest of the procession. Dressed in gold and white, stately yet modest, seen in pure profile, she seems to reflect in her larger person the figure of the Virgin herself, and this connection is made explicit by the indication of her companion. [73-4]

Again following Steinberg’s suggestion, Rosand identified the younger priest at the top of the stairs as another major figure in the Infancy narrative, Zacharias, the future husband of Elizabeth. 

At the top of the stairs stands the second priest, receiving special focus by the upturned glance of the young acolyte; he too is in profile, but facing left. These two figures…are isolated as a couple within the composition, formally responding to one another across the distance of the staircase. 

Rosand departed from earlier guesses and argued that the figures at the left of the painting, dressed mainly in black, must be the patrons. “The eight obvious portraits in Titian’s picture must surely represent the chief officers of the Carita…” In particular, the one in red must be the Guardino Grande who for solemn feasts would be dressed in “crimson robes and ducal sleeves.” [74]

The woman at the left holding a baby and stretching out her hand is a mendicant, a personification of Charity, the primary work of the confraternity. “Titian elevates her, or rather the entire action to the status of a personification, or enactment, of Caritas…”

Finally, at the outset of his paper Rosand admitted that the old woman looking on besides the steps has perhaps been the greatest single mystery of the painting. 

The old egg-seller in front of the stairs has inspired more comment than any other single figure in the composition. [56]

 He noted that most interpreters see her as a mere “pictorial detail” but argued that she represented much more. Panofsky had seen her as a personification of Judaism but Rosand was more specific. 

Instead of a representatives of the Jews as such, we have here, then, a personification of Synagogue. And it is to this tradition that Titian’s old egg-seller, as the unreconstructed Synagogue, belongs. [72]

However, his description of the traditional appearance of Synagogue does not fit his explanation.

an old woman dressed in tattered black garments. In her right hand she holds, inverted, the Tablets of the Law; in her left is the broken Roman vexillum, a red banner emblazoned with the gold letters S.P.Q.R [73]

Actually, the figure in black behind the two priests at the top of the stairs fits the description better. 

The egg-seller is old but her clothing indicates an elevated, even exalted status. Her gown is the same blue as the young Virgin’s and her head is covered with a white shawl that Titian had sometimes used in depictions of the Madonna. Rosand had argued that the gold and white of Elizabeth’s garments indicated her status but why ignore the garments of the old woman? Cima da Conegliano in an earlier version of the Presentation, that is often compared with Titian’s, also clothed the egg seller in blue and white. 

I believe that the old woman could very well be Anna the Prophetess, who appeared in the gospel account of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple. Scripture records that she had been a Temple denizen for years and it is not hard to imagine that Venetian artists would have wanted to also depict her attendance at the Presentation of Mary. 

It is true that she does not look at the young Mary ascending the steps. But her back is turned to the Temple and she looks toward or perhaps past the assembled figures who are also illuminated by the divine light that comes from the left. 

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*David Rosand: Titian’s Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple and the Scuola della Carita. The Art Bulletin, Vol. 58. No. 1 (Mar., 1976), pp. 55-84.