In his famous “Lives of the Most Eminent
Painters” Giorgio Vasari claimed a connection between Leonardo da Vinci and
Giorgione.
Giorgione
had seen certain works from the hand of Leonardo, which were painted with
extraordinary softness, and thrown into powerful relief, as is said, by extreme
darkness of the shadows, a manner which pleased him so much that he ever after
continued to imitate it, and in oil painting approached very closely to the
excellence of his model.*[i]
Vasari elaborated on this claim in his
biography of Titian which only appeared in the second edition of his “Lives”.
He contrasted Giorgione’s work with the work of the Bellini brothers.
But about
the year 1507, Giorgione da Castelfranco, not being satisfied with that mode of
proceeding, began to give to his works an unwonted softness and relief,
painting them in a very beautiful manner; yet he by no means neglected to draw
from life, or to copy nature with his colours as closely as he could. And in
doing the latter, he shaded with colder or warmer tints as the living object
might demand, but without first making a drawing, since he held that to paint
with the colours only, without any drawing on the paper, was the best mode of
proceeding and more perfectly in accord with the true principles of design.[ii]
Leonardo briefly visited Venice early in the
year 1500 after he had been forced to flee Milan following the fall of the
House of Sforza. Vasari did not claim that the fifty year old Leonardo met the
young Giorgione on that visit or even that they might have seen each others
work on that occasion. He traced the influence to about 1507 when Giorgione
only saw “certain works from the hand of Leonardo.”
Practically everything Vasari wrote must be
taken with a grain of salt. He certainly recognized the genius of Giorgione and
claimed that he was one of the inventors of the “modern manner”, but it would
have been typical for him to claim that the young Venetian had been influenced
by Leonardo, a Florentine.
Nevertheless, Vasari was a painter more than
a historian and we must credit him with the ability to detect stylistic
similarities in the work of the two masters. But what paintings “by the hand of
Leonardo” could Giorgione have seen? Here I would like to discuss the subjects
that Leonardo and Giorgione depicted.
In his study of Leonardo, Martin Kemp
included a picture gallery of paintings.[iii]
It is surprising to find how few works Leonardo actually produced in his long
career. Kemp lists twenty-two independent paintings starting with the famous “Annunciation”
of 1473-4 done in the Verrocchio studio, to the last painting, “Madonna, Child,
St. Anne and a Lamb,” started by Leonardo in 1508 but only completed by 1517.
Interestingly, Vasari’s words about the early
Giorgione, that he was a painter of Madonnas and portraits also apply to
Leonardo. Obviously both masters worked to satisfy their patrons’ demands for
portraits. Leonardo’s portraits of women from Ginerva de Benci (c. 1476-8) to
Mona Lisa (c. 1503-1516) are world famous, but the majority of his other works
deal with the Madonna.
Around 1475-6, not long after the
Annunciation in the Verrocchio workshop, Leonardo completed the so-called
“Madonna and Child with a Carnation.” According to Kemp, this painting “shows Leonardo’s first steps in reanimating
the genre of the Virgin and Child.” Madonna and Child sit alone inside a room
with a landscape perceived through windows. The landscape, according to Kemp,
“may reflect his interest in Netherlandish art.”
In 1479-80 Leonardo depicted another Madonna
and Child, the so-called Benois Madonna, now in the Hermitage. In this small painting “Leonardo has
endowed the relationship between mother and child with new complexity, energy,
and intensity of emotional reaction.” Madonna and child are still in an enclosed
room. Although there is a window, it is impossible to detect a landscape.
Around
the same time Leonardo also began work on a Madonna in profile (“the Madonna
Litta”) which would appear to have been completed by his pupil Boltraffio by
1497. In this work the Mother is nursing the child and both are in an enclosed
room with a landscape dimly perceived through windows.
Virgin of the Rocks, Louvre |
In 1483 the Milanese confraternity of the
Immaculate Conception negotiated a commission with Leonardo “for the large
sculpted altarpiece in their chapel in San Francesco Grande in Milan, as part
of a series of painted components and polychroming by Leonardo and the brothers
Evangelista and Giovanni da Predis.” Two versions of this famous painting now
known as the “Virgin of the Rocks" are still in existence: one in England’s
National Gallery and the other in the Louvre. Kemp described the revolutionary
nature of this painting.
the
treatment of light, shade, and colour shows how Leonardo reformed their
relationship in painting, using tonal description (i.e. the scale between white
and black) as the basis of the definition of form.
However, the painting also marked a departure
in subject. Madonna and Child have been taken our of the enclosed room and
placed right within the landscape with two other figures, the infant John the
Baptist and an angel. Rocks is not the right word for this landscape. Leonardo has placed his figures in a cave.
Instead of “Virgin of the Rocks” this
painting should be called the “Encounter of the Holy Family with the Infant
John the Baptist on the Return from Egypt,” or more simply, “Behold the Lamb of
God.” Among the apocryphal legends that grew up around the scriptural mention
of a flight into Egypt, was the very popular story of a meeting in the desert
between the Holy Family and the Baptist who had also escaped the murderous
designs of King Herod. Here is Anna Jameson’s account.
Thus, it is related that among the children
whom Herod was bent on destroying, was St. John the Baptist; but his mother
Elizabeth fled with him to a desert place, and being pursued by the murderers,
“the rock opened by a miracle, and closed upon Elizabeth and her child;” which
means, as we may presume, that they took refuge in a cavern, and were concealed
within it until the danger was over.[iv]
The story became very popular in the
fifteenth century and many artists depicted the meeting that centered around
the two young children, a meeting that foreshadowed the meeting years later at
the Jordan River when John would announce the beginning of the public ministry
of the Christ.
Why was this subject chosen for a Franciscan
chapel dedicated to the Immaculate Conception? As the doctrine of Mary’s
Immaculate Conception became more popular in the fifteenth century, artists had
to grapple with ways to depict the concept. One of the ways was to identify
Mary with the Woman from the Apocalypse or Book of Revelation, clothed with the
Sun, with the stars in her crown, and with the Moon at her feet. After giving
birth to her Child the Woman fled into the desert pursued by the great dragon
or devil.
Until a text is found my best guess is that
any depiction of Mother and Child in a landscape could be taken to represent
Mary’s Immaculate Conception. In my interpretation of Giorgione’s Tempest I
argued that Giorgione had not only put the nursing Madonna in a landscape but
also had actually painted her nude to depict her Immaculate Conception.
It
is possible that the “Virgin of the Rocks,” could have been seen by Giorgione. Another candidate could be the “Virgin of the Yarnwinder,” c. 1501-7. Kemp
attributes both extant versions of this painting to Leonardo with pupils, and
notes that technical examination of underdrawings indicates “Leonardo’ s direct
involvement in making two pictures of this subject.” He also noted that in both
versions underdrawings revealed “Joseph making a baby walker for Christ,” [v]a
pentimento that would indicate another reference to the flight into Egypt.
Finally, there is the Mona Lisa. Kemp states that the “basis for the
picture was established in Florence around 1503-4, where it was seen by Raphael
amongst others, but it appears to have been finished much later.” It’s hard to believe that Giorgione
could have seen it. Is this famous painting only a portrait or does it have
some mysterious subject?
Of course, there is always the possibility
that Vasari could have been wrong and that Giorgione never saw any of
Leonardo’s paintings, and that both artists developed their revolutionary
styles independently of each other. Nevertheless, it would appear that both
were painters of Madonnas and portraits, and that both depicted scenes from the
apocryphal legends concerning the flight into Egypt.
###
###
[i] Giorgio
Vasari, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, selected, edited, and introduced by
Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, NY, 1967, v. II, p. 227.
[ii] Op. cit, p.
235.
[iii] Martin
Kemp, Leonardo, Oxford, 2005. Pp. 247-254. Except otherwise noted all the
following quotes are from Kemp’s Gallery.
[iv] Anna
Jameson, Legends of the Madonna, Boston, 1885, p. 356.
[v] Kemp,
op.cit., p. 41.
Thank you for another great post! I'm beginning to look more and more into your interpretation of "The Tempest" being a depiction of the "Flight into Egypt" scene. I wonder if you have already addressed the subject of it's pentimenti, the x-ray image that reveals the absence of the Soldier (or in your interpretation Joseph) figure in the first layers, and the presence of another bathing female figure in the same spot? Do you think that Giorgione, perhaps, started that painting as something else and the final idea was developed later (which was definitely not uncommon), or do you have another explanation?
ReplyDeleteAtana:
ReplyDeleteI did not include a discussion of the pentimenti in my paper but did discuss them on a blogpost dated 10/24/10. Typing 'pentimento' on the search bar will get you there. I also discussed it on the blog portion of my website. At the time I did not think the pentimenti belonged in the paper even though the "man on the bridge" supported my argument.
I do not believe that Giorgione originally intended to have two women in the painting. He might have originally placed the woman on the left but then changed his mind. He might have just done an initial practice sketch on the canvas. He might have reused an old canvas. Who can say?
Frank