Giorgione, Titian, and Mary Magdalen

 On October 4, 2010 I put up a post on this site that suggested that Mary Magdalen is the subject of Giorgione's Laura. Since that time I have put up a number of posts that have argued that other mysterious paintings of beautiful women of the Venetian Renaissance could also be Mary Magdalen. Below find a summary article. 

Giorgione’s Laura has defied interpreters for over 500 years. It is a relatively small half-length painting (41 x 33.6 cm) of a pensive young woman who looks off to the right at the source of light that illuminates her face and partially bare chest. She seems to wear only an oversized fur-lined garment that is opened to reveal one bare breast. The painting now hangs in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum.

The catalog of the 2004 Giorgione exhibition, jointly sponsored by the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Accademia in Venice, called it a “Portrait of a Young Woman,” and only placed the popular title Laura in parenthesis. Sylvia Ferino-Pagden and Giovanna Nepi-Scire, two of the world’s leading Giorgione scholars, and curators of their respective museums, edited the entire catalog and also combined on the Laura catalog entry. They did an excellent job of tracing the provenance of the painting and firmly supporting the attribution to Giorgione. 

They also did a thorough evaluation of the unique inscription on the back of the painting: “on June 1 1506 this was made by the hand of master Giorgio from Castelfranco, the colleague of master Vincenzo Catena, at the instigation [instanzia] of misser Giacomo.” [i] The inscription was only deciphered in the nineteenth century but the two scholars believed that there was good evidence to support its authenticity.

Today most scholars agree that the seventeenth century identification of the young woman as Petrarch’s lover, Laura, is not tenable. Moreover, the painting cannot even be considered a portrait since no respectable woman of the time would have sat for such a depiction. 

Some have argued that it could be a depiction of a Venetian courtesan. The catalog pointed to the finding of one scholar that the sumptuous fur-lined robe was “the winter dress of a Venetian woman of pleasure.” On the other hand, there are signs such as the thin white veil and the laurel that traditionally refer to conjugal virtue. Here is the catalog’s summation.

 as noted by Goffen (1997), the thin white veil that partly covers her hair and falls over her breast is a typical accessory of married women…. The paradox that accompanies the interpretation of this painting lies in the fact that laurel is also a symbol of conjugal virtue…Giorgione’s Laura—regardless of whether she is a learned courtesan or a virtuous wife—is characterized by the extraordinary charge of sensuality and eroticism that makes this image unique in the painting of the early 16th century.

The Laura might not be as unique as the authors of the catalog entry suggest.  Other contemporary paintings also exhibit a mixture of eroticism and conjugal virtue and they have also defied interpreters. However, I believe that the Laura and these other paintings might all have a “sacred” subject, and that subject is Mary Magdalen. 

I don’t think I am the first to suggest Mary Magdalen as the subject of the Laura but recent catalogs do not even consider the possibility. All do point out the paradoxical iconographic symbols: the appearance of a Venetian courtesan combined with symbols of chastity and conjugal love such as the laurel leaves and headscarf.

Mary Magdalen is the only person who fits such a description. After the Madonna she was the most famous female saint of the Middle Ages. During the Renaissance she was regarded as a prostitute who after her encounter with Jesus became a true and virtuous bride of Christ. 

However, she is often portrayed after her conversion with breasts bared as a sign that she has thrown away her worldly finery and chosen the life of a desert contemplative. Correggio's later version of the saint bears a striking similarity to Giorgione's Laura. Her breasts are bared but the rest of her is covered with a sumptuous blue robe. She is easily recognized by her jar of precious oil, a stock symbol that Giorgione characteristically omitted.

Correggio: Mary Magdalen

In 2001 Paul Joannides discussed another painting of a young woman that he claimed bore a similarity to the Laura. He noted that it had often been attributed to Giorgione but insisted that "the closest comparisons are with Titian's work and there can be no serious doubt that it is his…."[ii]  He continued:

The Bust of a Young Woman is often thought to be a portrait of a courtesan, …There is an obvious link of mood and gesture with Giorgione’s Laura,… it is probably a fragment of a narrative composition…. But the action is ambiguous: is she opening her dress to reveal her breast, like Laura, or closing it in modesty? Given the high finish and luxurious color, this fragment is more likely to have formed part of a painting for a private house than a public place… Perhaps more likely is that she is a Magdalene in a Mary and Martha, the subject represented in Milan in the work of Bernardino Luini and his circle and one that would certainly have appealed to Titian, allowing him to contrast female types. But without further evidence no suggestion can be more than speculative.

Titian: Bust of a Young Woman
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena

Joannides failed to mention that the multi-colored striped shawl that covers the shoulder of the woman in the “Bust of a Young Woman” is similar to the one that Titian used years later in one of his many obvious depictions of Mary Magdalen.

Titian became the most prolific and famous painter of Mary Magdalens, and his many versions of a beautiful, semi-nude, weeping penitent Magdalen spread all over Europe. He did not depict the gaunt Magdalen of Donatello, emaciated after years of fasting in the desert, but a still beautiful woman who has only recently thrown off her courtesan's finery, and appears covered only by her gorgeous red hair. 

It is also possible that before he settled on these full figured, bare breasted Magdalens, the young Titian also painted a more discrete but equally beautiful Mary Magdalen in the mysterious painting that is now called Flora. This famous painting that hangs in the Uffizi gallery is dated to around 1517, about a decade after the Laura. It also features a beautiful young woman in an obvious state of undress who looks pensively off to the right toward the source of the light that illuminates her face and torso.

No one has ever been able to make more than a guess about the subject of the Flora. It was only in the mid-seventeenth century that a commentator attached the name of the Roman goddess of flowers to the beautiful woman in the painting. Although the name has stuck, modern scholars have brought forth objections and offered their own hesitant interpretations.

 In 1980 Charles Hope introduced the painting in his catalog by noting that Titian “painted virtually no mythological pictures based in this way on ekphrastic texts, and none at all of comparable scale or importance.” He added that while Venetian patrons might have been interested in erotic subjects, “they were relatively indifferent to classical precedent.” [iii]

Hope looked in another direction for the meaning of the Flora.

But there was also a distinctive and more pervasive local tradition of pictures in portrait format of anonymous pretty girls, either clothed or partially nude, which were no more than elaborate pin-ups…. The identity of the girl as Flora is established both by the flowers in her hand and by her costume, which is of the type worn by nymphs in contemporary stage productions…

Although he remarked that the subject was treated with “extreme sensitivity and discretion,” the painting was still a pin-up whose erotic implications are “central to its meaning.”

In a 2003 catalog of an exhibition at London’s National Gallery, David Jaffe saw the connection between Flora and Laura.

Flora is perhaps the supreme example of a genre developed in early sixteenth-century Venice showing ‘belle donne’, beautiful women, for the sake simply of their beauty. They were neither portraits—as such they would have seemed improper—nor did they usually have allegorical significance or mythological references…. Titian did not invent the type, but developed the tradition represented by works such as Giorgione’s ‘Laura’….The painting is a magnificent evocation of sensuality. ... The image may be read as a generalized ‘Venus’ type. The flowers, perhaps roses, suggest identification with Flora. [iv]

In the catalog of the 2006 Bellini, Giorgione, Titian exhibition jointly sponsored by Washington’s National Gallery and Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, Sylvia Ferino Pagden considered the Flora “the finest and most successful of all sensuous half-length female figures in sixteenth-century Venetian painting….” She noted its “Venus-like sensuousness” but pointed out the ambiguity of the subject.

If it was Titian’s intention here to depict Flora, was he thinking of Ovid’s goddesses or Boccaccio’s courtesan? Or is his portrait an artistic blending of the two?... yet his Flora has more the demeanor of a goddess….her lack of attention to the viewer makes him aware of his own insignificance….Titian’s re-creation of the classical goddess, however, lacks any reference to antiquity, even in the drapery….Flora’s chemise—usually seen merely peeking out from under a gown at the neck and sleeves but here serving as her main article of clothing overlaid by a cloth of brocade or damask—does not correspond to that of any classical figure and certainly not a Venetian bride... [v]

It should be noted that Titian’s Flora bears little resemblance to the goddess of flowers. There are no flowers tumbling from her hair and her dress was depicted by Ovid as adorned with many colors. Ferino-Pagden did identify the flowers in the hands of Flora as rose, jasmine, and violet and claimed that they provide “a key to interpreting her.” However, she provided no further explanation.

In her study, “Nature and Its Symbols,” Lucia Impelluso noted that “the jasmine has often been considered a flower of Heaven or a symbol of divine love.” While usually associated with the innocence and purity of the Virgin Mary, it can often be seen “woven into garlands adorning the heads of angels and saints.” Moreover, “if associated with roses, it can connote faith.” [vi] The wild rose is traditionally associated with Mary Magdalen. As far as the violet is concerned, Impelluso noted:

In the popular imagination, the little, strong-scented violet is a symbol of modesty and humility, and it was interpreted likewise by the Fathers of the Church as well.

I realize that the jasmine, rose, and violet that “Flora” holds in her hand could refer to someone else, but one should certainly at least suspect Mary Magdalen.

Giorgione’s Laura, Titian’s early “courtesan,” and the Flora could all be considered versions of Mary Magdalen. One significant objection, however, is the absence in each instance of the jar of ointment that is always associated with the Magdalen. Later, Titian displayed it prominently in his more obvious Magdalens.

  

Perhaps in this brief moment in time Venetian artists had come to believe that they could depict the essence of the Magdalen without resort to obvious iconographical symbols. Earlier, Giovanni Bellini had painted a Madonna and Child surrounded by two female saints. One is obviously Mary Magdalen but she is only recognized by her flowing red hair.

Appropriately, Flora was the poster girl for the magnificent 2013 Tiziano exhibition at Rome’s Scuderie del Quirinale. Her image was on the cover of the little pamphlet given to all visitors and posters of her were plastered all over Rome. Perhaps she and Laura and the other “belle donne” of the Venetian renaissance can be called pin ups but it is certainly conceivable that they are also Mary Magdalen.

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[i] Giorgione, Myth and Enigma, ed. Sylvia Ferino-Pagden and Giovanna Nepi-Scire, Vienna, 2004, pp. 197-8. Only the first catalog quote is cited. 

[ii] Joannides, Paul: Titian to 1518, Yale, 2001, pp. 94-96.

[iii] Hope, Charles: Titian, NY, 1980, pp. 61-2.

[iv] Titian, catalogue edited by David Jaffe, London, 2003, catalog entry 11.

[v] Brown, David Alan, and Ferino-Pagden, Sylvia, Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and the Renaissance of Venetian Painting, Washington, 2006, p. 226.

[vi] Impelluso, Lucia: Nature and Its Symbols, translated by Stephen Sartarelli, Los Angeles, 2003, p. 101.

Titian: Sacred and Profane Love, Relief Summary

Titian: Sacred and Profane Love, Relief summary

            Dr. Francis P. DeStefano

In my previous three posts on Titian’s “Sacred and Profane Love” I have discussed the figures in the antique relief that is placed so prominently in the center of the famous painting. I have argued that the three scenes represent great sinners: Adam and Eve around the Tree of Knowledge on the right; Cain and Abel toward the center; and on the left side St. Paul being thrown from his horse on the road to Damascus. The relief then has a direct relationship to the real subject of the painting that I have identified as, “The Conversion of Mary Magdalen.” See link for full paper..

Today I would like to deal with some possible objections to my interpretation and also present a summary account of the relief.  At the outset I would like to point out that my interpretation of the relief does not fly in the face of any settled opinion on the subject. For the most part scholars have either thrown in the towel, or just offered the scantiest of guesses. 

However, in 2001 Paul Joannides, in his study of the young Titian, provided a somewhat thorough examination. He noted the similarity of the relief to an equally mysterious one in an earlier work by Titian, "Jacopo Pesaro presented to St. Peter."

The grey marble trough of the sarcophagus contains a relief. Like that below Peter in Jacopo Pesaro presented to St. Peter, it is not based on any identified classical source but seems to be the invention of the artist.*

In the case of the "Sacred and Profane Love" he admitted that it would be “reasonable to suppose that the relief had some significance” but noted that so far there has been no plausible elucidation. He did agree that it “would seem odd if so prominent a scene had no relevance to the main one,” and so decided to take a close look. Here is his description of the relief in the “Sacred and Profane Love”. 

Starting from the left an engagement of some type, perhaps but not necessarily, a struggle, is proceeding between two figures, one, at the far left clearly male, the other, partly obscured behind the hind quarters of a horse, perhaps, but not certainly, female. The horse, which bears neither saddle nor bridle, is being led calmly left to right by a nude male figure, although since he is partly obscured by the shrub, it is difficult to ascertain exactly the nature of his action. This scene is separated by the bronze nozzle from that to the right which shows a violent episode; a nude woman lying on the ground, is being beaten—probably but not certainly on the buttocks—by a nude man. Taken literally, the scene appears to be one of punishment rather than murder or sexual assault. This group is represented in notional high relief; behind it, in lower relief, is a nude woman, standing to the left of a tree, across which a nude man is advancing towards her from the right, but without any clear intent.

He then paused for a moment to consider the possibility that the nude woman lying on the ground could be a man and the possible implication.

If, on the right-hand side, the sprawled figure could reasonably be identified as male, then the scene might represent Cain killing Abel, in which case the couple behind could be their parents, Adam and Eve either side of the tree of knowledge. But aside from the relative unlikelihood of representing an Old Testament scene on a classical sarcophagus, such a reading of the figures is not convincing, nor would it appear to relate in any way to the scene at the left. The most one can say about it is that a punishment and a conflict do seem to be represented and that it is treated in a specific—and surely meaningful way. 

In other words, Joannides saw Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel but couldn’t believe his own eyes. Two objections deterred him from seeing the relief as a “sacred” subject. In the first place, “there was the relative unlikelihood of representing an Old Testament scene on a classical sarcophagus.” Secondly, he could not see how the biblical scenes from Genesis could relate to the left hand side of the relief. A third objection was left unsaid. Since there is a great likelihood that the centrally located relief is related to the painting as a whole, to see a scriptural subject in the relief would point to a “sacred” subject for the “Sacred and Profane Love.”

Here is another line of reasoning. The figure on the left hand side of the painting is St. Paul who not only called himself the greatest of sinners but who was also one of the great propounders of the doctrine of original sin. He referred to it continually in his letters and felt its effect in his own life. He argued that because of the Fall, sin and death entered the world, and that it was only through the grace of God that he was freed from their clutches.

The conversion of St. Paul fits very well in a relief that also depicts Adam and Eve, as well as the story of Cain and Abel, the first instance of the presence of sin and death in the world. If this relief is a sacred subject, scholars might also want to take another look at Titian’s earlier attempt at an antique relief in Jacopo Pesaro being Presented to St. Peter. The subject of that relief has also eluded identification but I think I see Adam and Eve on the left. Why is it unthinkable that Titian would use an antique relief to depict a scriptural scene? Art historians have to fit their theories to the actual work of the artist and not vice versa.

Finally, I have wondered, along with some correspondents, why the action in the relief seems to move from right to left. You will notice that Joannides in his above description of the relief read it in the traditional way from left to right. Normally, in a narrative painting the action does begin in the left background and progresses through the mid-ground until it culminates with the foreground figures who are either in the center or off to the right. Giovanni Bellini did so in the Frick “St. Francis in the Desert”, and so did Giorgione in the “Tempest.” 

In my interpretation of the “Sacred and Profane Love”, I have argued that Titian employed the same left to right narrative scheme. As is often the case the city in the left background is a place of spiritual and even physical danger. The sinful Magdalen has left the city behind and now sits on the sarcophagus in the foreground contemplating her own conversion. We move across the water filled sarcophagus to see her own resurrection to a new life. She appears on the right side of the sarcophagus bereft of her worldly finery. Behind her in the right background the scene, where she will spend the rest of her life, is bucolic and peaceful.

I can only guess as to why Titian might have chosen to have the action on the relief move from right to left. First, it could have been just a painterly decision to have the action on the relief counterbalance the action in the main scene. It is after all a very large painting. I also wonder if he might have just used a copy of an engraving as a cartoon for the relief and just flipped the scene.

On a more profound level, perhaps Titian or his patron wanted the action on the relief to move backwards in time. So we can begin on the left and trace the action back from a story of a conversion from a life of sin to the origins of sin itself. Here is my view of the relief reading from right to left.

Adam stands on the extreme right on one side of the tree. Eve is on the other side and her outstretched arm actually touches her son Cain in the act of murdering his brother. Abel lies on the ground but he faces left away from his parents. In the medieval period Abel, whose sacrifice was acceptable to the Lord, was always viewed as a precursor of Christ. Dividing the relief in half is the spigot with flowing water, and right next to it is the emblem of the donor. On the left side, Paul’s attendant still leads the horse toward Damascus but Paul falls off in the other direction towards a new life. 

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*Paul Joannides, Titian to 1518, The Assumption of Genius, Yale, 2001, p. 192. 

Titian: Sacred and Profane Love, St. Paul on the Relief

Titian: Sacred and Profane Love. St. Paul on the Relief

Dr. Francis P. DeStefano

The meaning of the figures on the antique relief in the center of Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love has eluded scholars for centuries. In this post I would like to discuss the horse so prominently depicted on the left side of the relief. 

In my interpretation of the Sacred and Profane Love I argued that the subject of the mysterious painting is the “Conversion of Mary Magdalen,” and that the figures on the antique relief must not only refer to the subject of the painting, but also, must be depictions of great sinners. 

In my previous two posts I elaborated on my discussion in the paper and looked at the right side of the relief where we can now identify Adam and Eve as well as Cain and Abel. On the left side of the relief we can see a horse whose rider appears to be falling off. We can also make out two other men in front of and in back of the horse. *

Why has no one ever seen the conversion of St. Paul in this scene? Anytime, we see a riderless horse in a painting from the Renaissance we should suspect that the artist has attempted to depict the famous conversion on the road to Damascus. Here is the account of Paul’s conversion from chapter 9 of the Acts of the Apostles:

And as he went on his journey, it came to pass that he drew near to Damascus, when suddenly a light from heaven shone round about him; and falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why dost thou persecute me?” And he said, “Who art thou, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom thou art persecuting. It is hard for you to kick against the goad.” And he, trembling and amazed, said, “Lord, what wilt thou have me do?” And the Lord said to him, “Arise and go into the city, and it will be told thee what thou must do.” Now the men who journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing indeed the voice, but seeing no one. And Saul arose from the ground, but when his eyes were opened, he could see nothing. And leading him by the hand, they brought him into Damascus.

Although there is no mention of a horse in the scriptural account, it had become part and parcel of the story as early as the fourth century despite the objection of St. Augustine who argued that a Pharisee would never ride a horse. By the Renaissance the horse had become part of the common Catholic imagination and was usually included in artistic representations. 

For our purposes other important parts of the account would be the light from heaven that shone round Paul and forced him to fall to the ground. The voice of Jesus is heard but he does not appear. Also, Paul is accompanied by other men who hear the voice but stand by as speechless spectators.

In Titian's relief Paul is actually falling off the horse's hind quarters. One attendant can be seen in front of the horse, and another tries to prevent Paul's fall at the rear. 

Everyone is familiar with Caravaggio’s famous depiction of the event that still remains in its original location in the Cerasi chapel of S. Maria del Popolo in Rome. Paul lies on the ground, arms upraised toward the light and the horse towers over him.

  

Caravaggio: Conversion of Paul

Other depictions of the event often present a more tumultuous scene but still include the light, the other men, and the horse. These elements must have been commonplace even before the sixteenth century. Here is a famous tapestry made from a Raphael cartoon.

Tapestry from Raphael cartoon

Early in his career Giovanni Bellini also depicted the conversion of Paul.

Giovanni Bellini: Conversion of Paul

I know that Renaissance artists loved to depict horses but when we see a riderless horse in a seemingly inexplicable scene, we should at least consider the possibility of the conversion of Paul.

There is more than one reason why Titian or his patron might have wanted to include St. Paul in a painting representing the conversion of Mary Magdalen. The conversion stories of both saints were equally famous. At the same time, they were both symbols of sinners converted by divine love.

In researching this piece I turned to the always reliable Emile Male. In his magisterial study of later Medieval art Male re-discovered two extremely popular books of the fifteenth century that have subsequently slipped back into oblivion. The first was the Ars moriendi (the Art of dying):** 

The text was often striking, but it is the astonishing woodcuts above all that spread its fame throughout Europe….death appears not as a farcical dance, but as a serious drama played around the bed of the dying man; angel and devil stand at his side, contending for the soul that will soon depart...

The success of the Ars moriendi was even more extraordinary than the success of the Danse Macabre. Printed editions began to appear after the woodcut editions. Each country had its own… It appeared in turn in French, German, English, Italian, and Spanish….Even Italy, where Gothic barbarity was so scorned, was influenced by the crude woodcuts of the Ars moriendi, although it is true it robbed them of most of their original character. 

The other book was a commentary on the Ars moriendi in an edition published by Verard entitled "L’Art de Bien Vivre et de Bien mourir (The Art of Good Living and Good dying)."  Male noted that a "book that edified all Europe is worth some study."

Verard's commentary includes a number of episodes with corresponding woodcuts where devils and angels compete for the soul of the dying man. In one episode Mary Magdalen and St. Paul appear with St. Peter and the Good Thief to console the dying man.

When the devil cannot shake the dying man’s faith, he changes tactics. He no longer denies God, but represents him as inexorable... Hideous monsters again rove around the sick man’s bed. One presents him with a large parchment document: this is the list “of all the evils that the poor creature has committed during his sojourn on earth.”…
The angel again descends from heaven, accompanied by four saints. They are St. Peter, who thrice denied his Master; Mary Magdalene, the sinner; St. Paul, the persecutor whom God struck down to convert him; and the good thief, who repented on the cross. These are the great witnesses of divine mercy….

The woodcut shows Mary Magdalene with her jar of ointment and St. Paul is shown atop the fallen horse. the woodcut is dated 1492. In the same year (1514) that Titian painted the Sacred and Profane Love Raphael painted his depiction of St. Cecilia surrounded by four saints. In front, flanking St. Cecilia, are St. Paul with his sword of truth, and Mary Magdalen with her jar of ointment. 

Raphael: St. Cecilia with St. Paul and  Mary Magdalen

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*This series of posts first appeared on Giorgione et al... in the Spring of 2013.  The original paper was first published in 2011.

**Emile Male, Religious Art in France, The Late Middle Ages, Princeton, 1986, pp. 348-351. 

Titian: Sacred and Profane Love. Relief, Adam and Eve.

Titian: Sacred and Profane Love. Adam and Eve on the Relief

Dr. Francis P. DeStefano            

 In my interpretation of Titian’s “Sacred and Profane Love” I identified the subject of the mysterious painting as the “Conversion of Mary Magdalen.” Seeing the painting as a “sacred subject” opened the way to an explanation of the figures on the equally mysterious relief, a feature that even the greatest scholars have been unable to interpret. Some have even declined to deal with the figures on the relief.

                         

In my paper I discussed the two figures immediately to the right of center and identified them as Cain and Abel. It was not difficult to show that the image of a man in the act of delivering a blow to another man lying prone on the ground was the common way of depicting Cain’s murder of his brother. Titian himself used the same template years later.

In this post I will turn to the two nude figures to the right of Cain and Abel. How is it possible that scholars and others have never been able to identify the nude man and woman standing around a tree as Adam and Eve? What other woman is ever portrayed in full frontal nudity standing by a tree other than Eve. It is a little more difficult to see Adam but if we look closely we see him there on the other side of the tree.

The image of Adam and Eve standing around the tree at the moment of the Fall was probably ubiquitous during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It was sculpted on exterior walls and on the interiors of churches and baptistries. Here is an example from the exterior of the Doge’s palace in Venice. 

A quick search of the web will also reveal Adam and Eve around the tree on some famous paintings. In the Brancacci chapel Masaccio painted the  expulsion from the garden but Masolino, his associate, portrayed the first couple completely nude by the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil right before the Fall.

Later Raphael used the same motif in the Stanze.

Finally, here is a Titian depiction of Adam and Eve around the tree from around 1550. (Prado)

How have scholars not been able to see Adam and Eve on the relief of the “Sacred and Profane Love”?  In his classic study of the art and iconography of the Middle Ages Emile Male noted a similar problem in his own time. He raised the issue in a discussion of carved calendars on famous Medieval cathedrals.

The most beautiful carved calendars are at Chartres, Paris, Amiens, and Reims. They are works of true poetry. In these small scenes, man appears in eternal attitudes. The artist probably intended to represent the peasant of France, but it is also a man of all time, bent toward the earth, the immortal Adam. In their universality, these thirteenth-century reliefs avoid banality. The artists, who themselves did not live far from nature, had experienced this life in all its detail, for just beyond the walls of small medieval towns lay the real country with its tilled fields, its meadows, the beautiful rhythm of its Virgilian labors…when sculptors were imagining scenes of rustic life, they had only to look around them for models….

It is hard to believe that the obvious meaning of these scenes escaped early nineteenth-century archeologists. In 1806, Lenoir interpreted the twelve scenes illustrating the calendar of the cathedral of Cambrai as the twelve labors of Hercules. Dupuis, author of L’Origine de tous les cultes, did identify the signs of the zodiac on the façade of Notre-Dame of Paris, but from this he concluded that the cult of the sun or of Mithra had survived into the thirteenth century. *

Even today scholars and students expend enormous amounts of time and energy trying to find the equivalents of Hercules and Mithra in some of the most beautiful paintings of the High Renaissance. I believe that they are often looking in the wrong place, and often fail to see what would have been obvious to any Venetian artist, patron and even man in the street. 

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* Emile Male: Religious Art in France, the Thirteenth Century, Princeton, 1986, p. 69. Male's great study is available in paperback under the title, The Gothic Image.

Titian: Sacred and Profane Love, the Relief

Titian: Sacred and Profane Love. Cain and Abel on the Relief.

Dr. Francis P. DeStefano

Titian’s so-called Sacred and Profane Love is one of the most important and mysterious paintings of the Renaissance. One of its most mysterious features is the relief on the front of the sarcophagus like fountain. 

Almost fifteen years ago, in my interpretation of the painting as the “Conversion of Mary Magdalen” I was able to identify the scenes depicted on the relief and fit them into the overall subject of the painting. The explanation of the relief, despite its central position, had defied even the greatest scholars.

Erwin Panofsky included a discussion of The Sacred and Profane Love in his long essay on the Neoplatonic Movement in Florence and North Italy. The essay was published in 1939 along with others in his classic work, “Studies in Iconology”. The essay explored the philosophical work of Marsilio Ficino, and Panofsky used Titian’s painting as an example of Neo-Platonic themes. His essay became the starting point for all future discussions of the painting, and his "Two Venus" interpretation was widely accepted.

However, he did not discuss the relief and just relegated this admission to a footnote. “The reliefs on the sarcophagus invented by Titian in the classical style, have not yet been explained.”*  In the 1962 paperback re-issue Panofsky noted some criticisms of his essay but he still did not attempt to discuss the relief or alter the footnote. He was still not able to fit this piece of the puzzle into the picture.

In 1978 David Rosand accepted Panofsky’s Neo-Platonic "Twin Venus" interpretation and did attempt an explanation of the relief.

a third type is depicted on Titian's invented sarcophagus relief: bestial love-pure lust, which seeks not beauty and its procreation but rather mere satisfaction of sexual appetite-is symbolized by the unbridled force and the accompanying acts of passion and violence.**  

A few years later Rona Goffen, who wrote more on the painting than any one else, was obviously unsatisfied with Rosand's explanation but could only hazard a guess about the relief.

Perhaps Titian’s fictive relief—a pastiche of antique motifs—alludes to that myth (rape of the Sabine women)…***

Finally, in his Titian catalog of 2007 Peter Humfrey could only call the relief “Titian’s own invention" and leave it at that. #

The relief is not an insignificant detail. It is boldly presented right in the center of the painting. Why could these four great scholars with all their skill and ability not be able to see its real meaning? I think it is more than just my imagination that led me to see three great sinners depicted on the relief in a painting whose subject is Mary Magdalen, the greatest of sinners. On the viewer's right is Adam and Eve standing around the Tree. On the left is a man falling from a horse that can only be St. Paul. But just to the right of center there is an act of violence that depicts Cain and Abel.

This striking image depicts a man with his arm raised as if to strike a blow on the man lying prone on the ground. Is this such an unusual image? Is it Titian's own invention or is it a commonplace in depictions of Cain and Abel. the first instance of sin after the Fall?

Titian himself painted Cain and Abel approximately 30 years after the Sacred and Profane Love.

Titian: Cain and Abel

Here is Tintoretto's version of the act of violence.

Tintoretto: Cain and Abel

Rather than inventing this scene it would appear that Titian and Tintoretto were just following the standard universally accepted template for Cain's murder of his brother. In the Ghent Altarpiece Jan van Eyck used the same motif and even painted it as a sculpted relief.

Jan van Eyck: Ghent Altarpiece detail

I believe that any Venetian contemporary of Titian's would have immediately recognized the image of Cain and Abel on the relief in the "Sacred and Profane Love." This detail on the relief is enough by itself to make us consider the possibility that the Sacred and Profane Love is a sacred subject.

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*Panofsky, Erwin: “The Neoplatonic Movement in Florence and North Italy (Bandinelli and Titian),” in Studies in Iconology, Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance, Oxford 1939, Reprint 1962, p. 152.

**David Rosand: Titian, New York 1978. p. 80.

***Goffen, Rona: "Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love and Marriage", The Expanding Discourse, Feminism and Art History, ed. Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, NY, 1992, p. 121.

#Peter Humfrey, Titian, 2007, p. 47.