Giorgione: The Three Ages of Man

 Old age and diminished eyesight have practically brought my art history career to an end. As a result,  I have decided to reproduce my various interpretive discoveries once again on Giorgione et al... as a kind of archive. So far this year I have republished condensed versions of my interpretations of Giorgione's Tempest, Titian's Sacred and Profane Love, and Michelangelo's Doni Tondo. Below find my interpretation of Giorgione's Three Ages of Man  that originally appeared here on October 11, 2011. The full paper can be found on academia.edu. 

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 Giorgione’s Three Ages of Man is another one of his paintings that has so far eluded identification. The name of the painting that now hangs in the Pitti Palace is pure guesswork stemming only from the obvious disparity in ages of the three men. One appears to be about 60, another in his early thirties, and the last a young man in his teens.

Giorgione: Three Ages of Man
Pitti Palace, Florence
Oil on wood, 62 cm  x 77.5 cm

Scholars today object to the popular title. Some think it represents a music lesson and that the man on the viewer’s right is pointing to musical notes on the paper held by the young man. Others claim that it represents the education of the young emperor/philosopher Marcus Aurelius. Others just throw up their hands and claim that it contains, like other Giorgione works, multiple levels of meaning.

However, the most spectacular element in this mysterious painting has so far received little notice. Venetian painters were known for their coloration. Just look at the garments of the three men. Nothing in a Renaissance painting is there by accident or whim. The colors in this painting provide a real clue to its subject.

As far as I know no one has suggested that the painting has a “sacred” subject, but yet, it appears that Giorgione has depicted a scene from the nineteenth chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew. It is the story of the encounter of Jesus with the young man of great wealth. (See below for full text)

In Matthew’s account the young man asked Jesus what he could do to attain eternal life. Jesus told him to keep the Commandments, and specifically named the most important. The man replied that he had done so but still felt that something was wanting. Jesus then uttered the famous words, “If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” The gospel relates that the young man went away sad for he had many possessions.

How has Giorgione depicted this story and who is the third man? The man in the middle is obviously young and the golden lapels of his garment as well as his fashionable hat indicate that he is well to do. He is holding a piece of paper or parchment that contains some indecipherable writing that under magnification hardly looks like Renaissance musical notation.

On the right most Venetians would have immediately recognized the visage of Jesus. There is no halo or nimbus but Giorgione never employed that device. The pointed finger is certainly characteristic of Jesus. Here he points not at a sheet of music but at the Commandments, which the gospel account has just enumerated.

Jesus wears a green garment or vestment, certainly an unusual color for him. In fact, it looks like the robe or chasuble worn by a priest during Mass. At the hand of Jesus we can also see the white sleeve of the “alb", a long white robe always worn under the chasuble. Green is the color used by the Catholic Church during Ordinary time, that part of the Church year not identified with any of the great feasts.

The third man is St. Peter. He is the only other person identified in Matthew’s account of this incident. He stands on the left, head turned toward the viewer. Giorgione uses Peter as an interlocutor, a well-known Renaissance artistic device designed to draw the viewer into the painting and encourage emotional participation. The old man’s face is the traditional iconographical rendering of Peter with his baldhead and short stubby beard. As Anna Jameson noted many years ago, Peter is often portrayed as ”a robust old man, with a broad forehead, and rather coarse features.” **

Durer: St. Peter detail

Giovanni Bellini and Albrecht Durer, both Giorgione contemporaries, depicted Peter’s head in this fashion. About a hundred years later Caravaggio still used it in striking fashion in the "Martyrdom of St. Peter" in S. Maria del Popolo in Rome, and in the "Denial of Peter" now in New York’s Metropolitan Museum.

Caravaggio: Denial of Peter

The color of Peter’s robe is also liturgically significant. Peter is rarely shown wearing red, but Giorgione has chosen to show him wearing the color reserved for the feast days of the martyrs. In the gospel account immediately after the young man went away sad, Peter, speaking for the other disciples as well as for the viewer of Giorgione’s painting, had asked, “Behold we have left all and followed thee: what then shall we have?”

In the first decade of the sixteenth century Venice was at the apex of its glory. It would suffer a great defeat at the end of the decade during the War of the League of Cambrai but until that time it was arguably the wealthiest and most powerful of all the European nations. It was certainly the only one that dared confront the mighty Ottoman Empire.

Nevertheless, some young Venetian patricians were wondering whether the whole life of politics, commercial rivalry, and warfare was worthwhile. One of them, Tommaso Giustiniani, a scion of one of the greatest families, did actually sell all his possessions, including his art collection, in order to live as a hermit in a Camaldolensian monastery. At one point he wrote to a few friends, who were also considering a similar move, about the futility of their daily lives. He argued that Venetian life was agitated, completely outward, and continually dominated by ambition. It was the reason for all their worry.

“If, then, a Stoic philosopher appeared to free their minds from all these disturbances, his efforts would be in vain, so completely does agitation dominate and enfetter their whole lives. How can anyone not feel disgust for such an empty existence.”? ***

Peter and the other disciples were shocked when Jesus said that it would be harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. “Who then can be saved,” they asked? The response of Jesus was full of hope: “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Green, the liturgical color used throughout the Church year, is also the color of hope.

“The Encounter of Jesus with the Rich Young Man,” the name we can now give to the painting in the Pitti Palace, would certainly appear to have an historical context in Giorgione’s time. Five hundred years after the death of this short-lived genius perhaps we can begin to understand that Giorgione was a unique and original painter of sacred subjects.

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Full text of Matthew 19:16-27.

And behold, a certain man came to him and said, “Good Master, what good work shall I do to have eternal life?” He said to him, “Why dost thou ask me about what is good? One there is who is good, and he is God. But if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.” He said to him, “Which?” And Jesus said,

Thou shalt not kill,
Thou shalt not commit adultery,
Thou shalt not steal,
Thou shalt not bear false witness,
Honor thy father and mother, and,
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”

The young man said to him, “All these I have kept; what is yet wanting to me?” Jesus said to him, “If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” But when the young man heard the saying, he went away sad, for he had great possessions.

But Jesus said to his disciples, “Amen I say to you, with difficulty will a rich man enter the kingdom of heaven. And further I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” The disciples hearing this, were exceedingly astonished, and said, “who then can be saved?” And looking upon them, Jesus said to them, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

Then Peter addressed him, saying, “Behold we have left all and followed thee: what then shall we have?”

* Note: This article first appeared in Giorgione et al... on Oct. 8, 2011. It followed upon my interpretations of Giorgione's Tempest, and Titian's Sacred and Profane Love as sacred subjects. 

** Anna Jameson, "Sacred and Legendary Art," Boston, 1896, Vol. 1, p. 191.

*** Dom Jean LeClercq, Camaldolese Extraordinary, The Life, Doctrine, and Rule of Blessed Paul Giustiniani, Bloomingdale, Ohio, 2003, pp. 61-62.

Michelangelo's Don Tondo: the Nudes

I published my interpretation of Michelangelo's Doni Tondo in installments on this site back in 2015. The complete paper can now be read or downloaded at academia.edu. I have decided to re-post it this year win order to bring together all of my interpretive discoveries. In the two previous posts I argued that in the foreground of the painting Michelangelo depicted the Madonna offering her Son in the same way that a priest offers the Eucharistic host during the Consecration of the Mass. The second post  discussed the role of the young John the Baptist in the mid-ground. Today, I reprise the third part of that paper that identified the nudes in the background as the Nephilim of the Hebrew scriptures at the time of Noah.

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In recent years the five nude young men in the background of Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo have received as much, if not more, attention than the Holy Family in the foreground. There would appear to be no agreement as to who they are or what they represent. Among other things, they have been variously interpreted as angels without wings, sinners, penitents awaiting Baptism, figures from pagan antiquity, or figures from the Old Testament.

In a paper, entitled “Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo: Holy Family and Family Myth,” Andree Hayum concentrated on the scene in the background. She noted the many different interpretations offered for the five nude men, but found the source in the Old Testament account of the drunkenness of Noah. She saw an obvious connection between the young men and Michelangelo’s famous depiction of the Noah story on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel.

But if one thinks of them as a constellation of three, the figures they recall are Michelangelo’s sons of Noah in the Sistine fresco of Noah’s Drunkenness. The most notable feature of Michelangelo’s sons of Noah is their nudity.*

Michelangelo: Drunkenness of Noah

In her interpretation the three men on the viewer’s right in the Doni Tondo would be Noah’s sons Ham, Seth, and Japheth before the incident of their father’s humiliating drunkenness. After drinking of the fruit of the vine, Noah had fallen naked into a stupor in his tent. Ham looked upon his father’s nakedness but the other two averted their faces and covered him. When Noah awoke and realized what had happened, he cursed Ham. Hayum argued that the two innocent or sinless sons are therefore depicted after the episode on the viewer’s left.

There is a connection between the young John the Baptist in the midground of the Doni Tondo and the story of Noah. Not only did theologians and artists see the Baptist, the last and greatest of the Hebrew prophets, as a link between the Old and New Covenants, but also they had related the story of Noah to Baptism.

In the First Letter of St. Peter the saving of Noah and his family are seen as prefiguring Baptism. Just as the waters of the Flood wiped away sin, so too do the waters of Baptism. There can be no doubt of the prominence of the Noah story during Michelangelo’s time. Savonarola, his favorite preacher, had given perhaps his most famous series of sermons on Noah and the Flood right before the French invasion of Italy in 1494. Michelangelo featured the Noah story on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel only a few years after the completion of the Doni Tondo.

Nevertheless, I have some questions about Hayum’s hypothesis. In the first place, where is Noah in the Doni Tondo? For Hayum this question was not a problem because she saw Noah in the figure of St. Joseph.

As in the sacrifice of Noah, the Holy Family alludes to Noah and his sibylline daughter-in-law. They have come to rest holding up the future male child. Like the ritual of sacrifice, the thanksgiving and the gift are one, and a sense of celebration prevails. **

Noah’s daughter-in-law was reputed to be a sibyl and given the sibyls in the Sistine chapel, it was easy for Hayum and others to recognize a sibyl in Mary’s posture. Nevertheless, I believe it would be impossible to find another reference to Joseph as Noah. If anything, Noah is a type of Christ, not of St. Joseph. Noah’s salvation of mankind from destruction at the time of the Flood prefigured the salvation effected by Christ on the Cross.

My second question relates to the postures of the nude figures in the Doni Tondo. Rather than participating in the scene of their father’s drunkenness, they lounge about like modern Italian men on a street corner ogling passing young women. A similar posture can be seen in an earlier devotional tondo by Luca Signorelli that is usually called the Medici Madonna. Hayum and others have seen a connection between the five nudes in Michelangelo’s tondo and the four practically nude young men in Signorelli’s painting.

Luca Signorelli: Medice Madonn

In the foreground of Signorelli’s painting the Madonna sits on the ground while her son appears to be taking his first step. St. Joseph and John the Baptist are absent but a bust of the Baptist as a man appears in the fictive frame above the tondo with a banner reading “Ecce Agnius Dei”. However, the four young men in Signorelli’s tondo also appear to be idlers. It is hard to see how they could be the sons of Noah either before or after the incident of his drunkenness.

I would like to suggest that the nudes in both paintings are related to the story of Noah but that they are not his sons. In the Book of Genesis there is a brief reference to giants upon the earth. Here is an English translation of the Vulgate Latin.

Now giants (gigantes) were upon the earth in those days. For after the sons of God went in to the daughters of men, and they brought forth children, these are the mighty men of old, men of renown. [Genesis 6:4]

The Golden Legend embellished the biblical account of the time of Noah.

This time men began to multiply upon the earth, and the children of God, that is to say of Seth, as religious, saw the daughters of men, that is to say of Cain, and were overcome by concupiscence and took them to their wives. This time was so much sin on earth in the sin of lechery, which was misused against nature, wherefore God was displeased…

A fuller account can be found in the apocryphal legends of the Jews.

Unlike Istehar, the pious maiden, Naamah, the lovely sister of Tubal-cain, led the angels astray with her beauty, and from her union with Shamdon sprang the devil Asmodeus. She was as shameless as all the other descendants of Cain, and as prone to bestial indulgences. Cainite women and Cainite men alike were in the habit of walking abroad naked, and they gave themselves up to every conceivable manner of lewd practices. Of such were the women whose beauty and sensual charms tempted the angels from the path of virtue. The angels, on the other hand, no sooner had they rebelled against God and descended to earth than they lost their transcendental qualities, and were invested with sublunary bodies, so that a union with the daughters of men became possible. The offspring of these alliances between the angels and the Cainite women were the giants, known for their strength and their sinfulness… ***

The legends of the Jews ascribed a number of names to these giants but one was Nephilim, “because bringing the world to its fall, they themselves fell.” The modern Jerusalem bible does use the word Nephilim instead of giants to describe these troublemakers whose sins were so great that it took a flood to wipe them out. In addition to walking about naked, the Nephilim were noted for their arrogance and wantonness.

They knew neither toil nor care, and as a consequence of their extraordinary prosperity they grew insolent. In their arrogance they rose up against God…. It was their care-free life that gave them space and leisure for their infamies. ***

The description of the Nephilim in the Jewish legends fits the depiction of the nude young men in the background of both Signorelli’s Medici Madonna and Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo. The painter of the ceiling of the Sistine chapel certainly had knowledge of the Book of Genesis. Scholars have demonstrated that he could have read the text in Italian because of the publication of the vernacular Malerbi bible in 1490. He obviously used the Malerbi woodcuts in his work in the Sistine chapel.

Could he have been familiar with the folklore and legends of the Jews? Michelangelo grew up in a Florence that was a center of Hebraic studies. Michelangelo trained at the Medici court where Pico della Mirandola was known for his knowledge of the Hebrew lore and traditions that were all lumped together under the heading of Cabala. Most of Savonarola’s sermons were based on the books of the Old Testament. Also, Sante Pagnini, who succeeded Savonarola as Prior of San Marco, was a Dominican specialist in Hebrew language and grammar. He spent practically his entire career translating the Hebrew Scriptures into Latin.

Finally, another source for the Nephilim was readily available in a book published only a decade before Michelangelo painted the Doni Tondo. David Whitford’s 2009 study, The Curse of Ham in the Early Modern Era, included a chapter devoted to the Giants or Nephilim. In particular, he discussed the Commentaria of Annius of Viterbo, a Dominican friar, whose book containing alleged writings and fragments of pre-Christian Greek and Latin authors appeared in 1498. Contemporary humanists suspected that the Commentaria and its author were frauds. Annius claimed linguistic knowledge that he did not possess, and even planned a fake archaeological discovery. Nevertheless, the book became very popular and was reprinted in 1515 with only minor corrections.

Here is Whitford’s account of Annius on Noah and the Nephilim.

Book One begins by stating that before the “famous catastrophe of the waters, by which the entire world perished, many ages passed.” In these ages, giants ruled the world from their great city, Enos. The giants were corrupt and prone to tyranny, lechery, and debauchery. They devoted themselves to sexual immorality such that, “they had intercourse with their mothers, their daughters, their sisters, with other men and with wild beasts.” They also despised religion and the gods. Despite warnings and prophecies that the world would be destroyed because of this wickedness, the giants continued their impiety. Only one giant, who was more “reverential to the gods and wiser than the rest,” paid any attention to the prophecies; because of this he survived. His name was Noa “and he had three sons, Samus, Japetus, and Chem.” Noa (or Noah) survived because he could read the stars and foresaw the deluge to come. Thus, beginning 78 years before the Flood, he built an ark. When the floods came, the whole human race was drowned, except for Noa and his family. From this family sprang all the peoples of the earth. #

Despite the spurious nature of the Commentaria, it would appear that the story of the Nephilim was in the air even before its publication in 1498, and that the Commentaria of Annius only added to its popularity.

Why would Michelangelo place the proud giants or Nephilim in the Doni Tondo? I can only offer the following suggestion. The painting is a devotional image. The Madonna elevates her infant Son in the way a priest elevates the Host at Mass. John the Baptist looks at the Host and utters the words of the Agnus Dei: Behold the Lamb of God…. But the full version of the ancient prayer is “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.

The Nephilim represent the sins of the world. I suggest that they are the nudes in the background of both the Doni Tondo and Signorelli’s Medici Madonna. In both paintings the Madonna and Child have turned their backs on the nudes in the background. Instead of a Flood, the Lord has sent his only Son to take away the sins of the world.

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*Andree Hayum, "Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo: Holy Family and Family Myth". 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. 421-424.

** Hayum, op. cit., p. 427.

*** Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, 1909, V. 1, c. 4. Available online.

# David Whitford, The Curse of Ham in the Early Modern Era. 2009. 

Doni Tondo Part II: John the Baptist

So far this year I have been re-posting my interpretations of famous but mysterious Renaissance paintings. In my previous post, I put up the first part of my interpretation of Michelangelo's Doni Tondo in which I argued that Mary is depicted as raising her Son in the way a priest elevates the Host at the Consecration of the Mass. Below find the second part. The full version can be found on academia.edu.

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In the Doni Tondo Michelangelo placed the Holy Family outside in a landscape. He used the setting of one of the most popular legendary subjects of the day, the encounter of the Holy Family with the infant John the Baptist on the return from their sojourn in Egypt. Obviously, the infant John had also been saved from the murderous designs of King Herod. While the Holy Family had fled to the safety of Egypt, popular legends recounted the escape of the Baptist and his mother Elizabeth by taking refuge in a desert cave or grotto.

Michelangelo: Doni Tondo

Scripture does not record how long the Holy Family remained in Egypt but the legends claimed that when they finally did return to Judea, they encountered the young John the Baptist in the desert. The significance of the meeting was not lost on theologians, ordinary folk, and the artists who found a ready market for paintings of the meeting of the two infants.

The meeting in the desert was regarded as a precursor of the meeting at the Jordan some thirty years later that marked the beginning of the public life of Jesus. At the Baptism of Jesus, John had proclaimed, “behold the lamb of God”, a prophecy of the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross. When artists portrayed the two infants meeting and sometimes embracing in the desert, they were depicting the acceptance by Jesus of his sacrificial mission.

Madonna of the Rocks, Louvre

Leonardo’s so-called “Madonna of the Rocks” is a good example of the encounter with the young John the Baptist. Leonardo placed the meeting in the cave or grotto in which the Baptist and his mother Elizabeth took refuge. One version, now in London, even depicts the Baptist showing the little cross to the infant Jesus.

Madonna of the Rocks, London

Leonardo’s equally famous depiction of Mary, her mother Anne, and the two young boys is also a version of the encounter in the desert. In the original cartoon Leonardo included the two boys but he substituted a lamb in the final version. Leonardo exhibited the cartoon on his return to Florence shortly before Michelangelo began working on the Doni Tondo but Michelangelo finished his painting before the completion of Leonardo’s final version. *

Leonardo Cartoon

In Michelangelo’s tondo the young John does not embrace or gambol with Jesus. Neither does he cozy up with the Holy Family or even join up with the group as he does in so many depictions. He stands behind or leans on a parapet that separates him from the Holy Family as if he were a member of a congregation. As Mary elevates her Child,  John is observing the elevation of the Host at Mass. His words, “Behold the Lamb of God”, form part of the “Agnus Dei”, one of the most ancient prayers of the Mass. 

 

The sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross was reenacted at every Mass. When the priest elevated the Host at the Consecration, the congregation could not only see the Host but also a crucifix on the wall above or hung on the altar screen. It is difficult to know what went through an ordinary person’s mind at that point in the Mass. Early in the twentieth century Pope Pius X urged Catholics not to bow in reverence but to look upon the elevated Host and say to themselves the words of doubting Thomas, “my Lord and my God.” But during the Renaissance we most likely have to turn to the artists for the answer. When John the Baptist approached Jesus either as a child in the desert or at the Jordan years later, his words, “behold the Lamb of God” called to mind the elevation of the Host at the Consecration.

There are points of comparison between Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo and an earlier Florentine tondo by Luca Signorelli commonly called the Medici Madonna but actually a depiction of the return from Egypt. In the foreground the Madonna sits on the ground while her son appears to be taking his first step. St. Joseph is absent but a bust of John the Baptist as a man appears in the fictive frame above the tondo. Beneath the bust is a banner with the words “Ecce Agnius Dei”. 

Luca Signorelli: Medici Madonna

Most scholars have noted that Michelangelo placed the Baptist in the midground of the Doni Tondo as a link between the Holy Family in the foreground and the five nude young men in the background of the Doni Tondo. It has been argued that the Baptist, the last and greatest of the Hebrew prophets, acts as a link between the Old and New Covenants. 

In the background of the Signorelli tondo mentioned above there are also some practically nude young men in various poses. It has been argued that Michelangelo must have been aware of the Signorelli Medici Madonna. But in each case, who are these nude young men, or what do they represent? This question is the one that seems to absorb modern scholarship the most, and I will turn to it in my next post. 

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Note: Although contemporary observers identified the other woman in Leonardo's painting as Mary's mother Anne, I have long suspected that it is really Mary's cousin Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist. Who else would be present at the meeting in the desert? 

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.