I would highly recommend the following three short
books for anyone interested in the Venetian Renaissance. I have written about
them at length in earlier posts but would just like to present a brief overview
here.
The authors are Salvatore Settis, one of Italy’s leading art historians
and cultural figures and the director of Pisa’s famed Scuola Normale Superiore;
the late Rona Goffen, who before her death was one of America’s leading and
most prolific historians of Venetian Renaissance art; and John V. Fleming,
Professor emeritus of Literature at Princeton University.
Giorgione: Tempest Accademia, Venice |
In researching my interpretation of the Tempest as
“The Rest on the Flight into Egypt,” no book has been of greater assistance
than “Giorgione’s Tempest,” written by Salvatore Settis in 1990. In his
introduction Professor Settis laid down a series of iconographical ground rules
that should be used in any interpretation. *
For example,
Interpreting the Tempest means providing “a well
documented explanation for each feature, and fitting all together into one
persuasive framework. (2)
He argued that the famous painting must be treated
like a puzzle and that any interpretation must be sure that all pieces fit, and
fit easily without being squeezed into position.
He gave a very comprehensive analysis of practically
every interpretation up to 1990 and included a very useful comparison chart.
Even though his own very detailed and erudite explanation of the Man and the
Woman as Adam and Eve was strongly criticized, his book remains today the most
useful starting point for any study of Giorgione and his famous painting.
Titian: Pesaro Altarpiece Frari, Venice |
I owe a great debt to Rona Goffen. When I originally
saw the nudity of the woman in the Tempest as Giorgione’s way of depicting the
Immaculate Conception of Mary, I just assumed that the doctrine was important
in Catholic Italy. However, it was only after a chance encounter with Goffen’s
“Piety and Patronage in Renaissance Venice” that I came to realize just how
important the Immaculate Conception was in Giorgione’s Venice. **
Goffen wrote many books and articles on the Italian
Renaissance but in my opinion “Piety and Patronage in Renaissance Venice” was
her best work. Subtitled, “Bellini, Titian and the Franciscans,” she never
discussed Giorgione’s “Tempest” but her discussion of the historical background
solidified my thoughts about the famous painting. Moreover, she insisted that
the art of the Venetian Renaissance could only be understood by attempting to
see it through the eyes of contemporary Venetians.
She studied the writings of prominent clerics like
Bernardino of Siena, a patron saint of Venice, and Lorenzo Giustiniani, the
saintly first Patriarch of Venice, and pointed out the importance, but also the
difficulty, of seeing things through their eyes.
Their influence on Venetian piety must have been as
pervasive during the Renaissance as it is difficult today to gauge in any
precise way. Nevertheless, their thoughts and writings constitute part--a very
important part--of the original context of sacred art in Renaissance Venice. One
must attempt to reconstruct that context in the historically informed
imagination.
In this book Goffen concentrated her attention on
the Frari and on its incomparable altarpieces. The dust jacket of her book
gives a good summary.
The church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in
Venice encapsulates the history of Venetian Renaissance art as well as the
histories of a patrician family, a religious order, and a city….All this is
embodied in the altarpieces painted for the Frari by two of the greatest masters
of Venetian art—Giovanni Bellini and Titian.
Any
trip to Venice must include the Frari.
Giovanni Bellini: St. Francis in the Desert Frick Museum, NY |
Finally,
I include John V. Flemings study of Giovanni Bellini’s famous “St. Francis in
the Desert”, entitled “From Bonaventura to Bellini.” Fleming
argued that Bellini followed an iconographical scheme based on a profound understanding of
Franciscan spirituality.***
He
questioned the prevailing “Stigmatization” interpretation and offered an
alternative based on his knowledge of medieval Franciscan texts.
It is a painting full of ideas, ideas much in vogue
among serious Christians of the later Middle Ages and almost universally
ignored by modern art history. The purpose of my own study is to give some
account of these ideas—that is to say, in some fashion to “explain” the
painting….the more profound and difficult intention is to suggest some of the
ways in which fundamental Franciscan ideas, ideas often by nature more poetic
and pictorial than discursive, could find powerful expression in word and
image. (5)
He
argued that every detail in the painting is there by design, and proceeded in
chapter by chapter to present a masterful explanation of all the iconographical
elements in the painting: the city in the background, the flora and fauna, the
details of the saint’s habitat, and even the tiny chartula tucked in his belt.
He
realized that he had to deal with accumulated prejudice.
For critics of a certain viewpoint, the word
‘medieval’ is naughty, , and the suggestion that, for instance, Bellini might
have had medieval inspiration in painting a Madonna must be advanced
apologetically. By implication, his sources should be pagan and cabbalistic,
not scriptural and patristic. (7)
Fleming’s
book is a primer on how to look at a Renaissance painting. He did not discuss
Giorgione’s Tempest but I was emboldened by his attempt to take on the
prevailing interpretations. I also found a degree of similarity between the
Tempest and Bellini’s St. Francis. In particular, Fleming’s analysis of the
prominent bird in the mid-ground helped me to identify the mysterious bird on
the rooftop of Giorgione’s painting.
The
book by Settis is still available in paperback. The other two are harder to
find. ###
*Salvatore Settis, Giorgione’s Tempest, Interpreting the Hidden
Subject, Chicago, 1990.
**Rona Goffen, Piety and Patronage in Renaissance Venice,
Yale, 1986.
***John V. Fleming: From
Bonaventure to Bellini, an Essay in Franciscan Exegesis, Princeton, 1982.