Interpreting the Tempest: Paris and Oenone

 

No painting has received more interpretations than Giorgione's Tempest. Back in 2005 I felt that the way was open to my new interpretation of the painting as "The Rest on the Flight into Egypt" because the previous interpreters had cancelled each other out. Nevertheless, I had to deal with the most important of these interpretations, and many years ago I posted reviews on this site, and would like to re-visit some this year. Below find a review of one of the mythological interpretations that have been put forward. 

 

In his essay, “The ‘Favola’ in Giorgione’s Tempesta,” in the 2004 Giorgione exhibition catalog, Jurgen Rapp found the subject of the painting in the mythological story of Paris and Oenone. Rapp correctly took issue with those interpreters, including some in the same catalog, who claimed that there is “no subject” in Giorgione’s most famous painting. 

Observation alone forbids viewing the picture,…mainly as a landscape, in which the human figures play a subordinate role as atmospheric decoration. The expressive size and power of the figures, which dominate the lower half of the picture, are in this case independent and provide a precisely balanced counterweight to the landscape that extends into the upper half of the painting….(119)

His short essay, a summary of his larger dissertation, attempted to fit all the iconographical elements into the story of the two ill-fated lovers, Paris and Oenone. It is necessary to provide a brief recap of the legend. 

Peter Lastman: Paris and Oenone, 1619
Worcester Art Museum

As we know from Homer, Paris was the son of King Priam of Troy and his wife, Hecuba. At the birth of Paris, Hecuba had a dream that was interpreted to mean that her new son would be responsible for the destruction of Troy.

To avert this disaster, the parents decided to put their son to death by exposing him to the elements on Mt. Ida. However, he was saved and raised to maturity by a shepherd and grew up to be a shepherd himself, albeit an extremely handsome one. Eventually, his looks caught the attention of the seer-nymph Oenone, daughter of the Ilian river Kebren. They married and she bore his child, Korythos.

Soon after, Paris gets involved in the famous beauty contest known as the Judgment of Paris. Asked to decide who is most beautiful, Juno, Athena, or Aphrodite, he chooses Aphrodite after she bribes him by promising him Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world.

He promptly deserts Oenone and his newborn son, Korythos, and returns to Troy and the rest is history. Not unexpectedly, Oenone is broken-hearted, bitter and enraged. In the post-Homeric legends her son grows up to be even more handsome than Paris. He also travels to Troy where his looks attract Helen. Paris responds by killing Korythos. Later Paris is fatally wounded by a poisoned arrow and returns to Oenone, the only one whose healing powers can save him. Still angry, she refuses and he dies. Quickly repenting she kills herself and both she and Paris are buried in the same grave.

Not surprisingly, in Rapp’s interpretation the key to the painting is Paris, the man on the left.

The key…is to be found in the figure of the standing young man with the crook. The inconsistency of his choice of dress is immediately noticeable: on the one hand the extravagant breeches that point to a noble warrior, on the other a simple, casually worn shirt, and a doublet loosely slung over his shoulders, which in combination with the crook, indicate a shepherd….(119)

Rapp saw Paris in the act of deserting Oenone and their son.

Giorgione depicts the moment, when Paris bids farewell to his nymph Oenone and their child Korythos at the Kebren spring on Mount Ida. As he pauses one last time and looks back to his family, his right foot and the crook are already pointed toward the edge of the picture; in the next moment he will leave the scene. (122)

Although Rapp stressed the importance of looking at the painting, I believe that this observation is way off. I don’t believe that any observer of this masterpiece has ever seen the Man in the process of exiting stage left. Some have claimed that the Man has just encountered the woman, or that he has stumbled upon her in a wilderness. Some think that he might even be thinking of assaulting her. Others claim that she only exists in his imagination.

In my interpretation of the Tempest as “The Rest on the Flight into Egypt,” the Man is St. Joseph and he stands on guard watching over the Woman and Child. Artistically, he acts as an Albertian “interlocuter” directing the viewer’s attention to the nursing woman and her Child. In no way is the Man the central or focal point of the painting. 

I also question Rapp’s observational skills concerning the woman whom he identified as the seer-nymph Oenone.

After Paris has left her, the naiad is cast down by a bottomless grief, which soon turns to raging jealousy. (120)…the prophetic woman begins to see the dark fate with her gliding gaze. (122)

How is it possible to see “bottomless grief” and “raging jealously” in the look that Giorgione’s woman directs not at the Man but at the viewer of the painting?





Rapp took on most of the other iconographical symbols. The broken columns in the mid-ground represent the common grave of Paris and Oenone. The City in the background represents besieged Troy. 

Thunder, lightning and storms as heralds of personal and political catastrophes were also the subject of the widespread thunder books, called ‘brontologies’." (121-2)

He pointed out that Padua identified itself with ancient Troy. He identified the bird on the rooftop as a heron, and noted that Virgil called the heron a harbinger of tempests. But he drew no connection between the siege of Padua in 1509 during the Cambrai war and the siege of Troy. He dated the painting to 1508.

Despite the importance Rapp attached to Paris, he believed that the pentimenti revealed by scientific studies indicated that the Man was not in the “earlier” version. “The figure of Paris was painted over the left-hand naiad only later.” The earlier version included Oenone’s sister, Astarte, the goddess of lightning.

The earlier version…represents a mental image in a pessimistic mood, or more precisely, a ‘pictorial’ elegy on the unhappy consequences of love, sketched with two mythological fates of women. (122)

Like other interpreters he did not discuss the other pentimento—the little man on the bridge carrying a pilgrim’s staff. Is such a character Homeric?

Discovery of Paris?

Finally, it can be said that Rapp’s thesis is partially based on a mistaken identification.

Giorgione and his circle repeatedly used subjects from the youth of Paris,…For Giorgione himself the following are attested: Discovery of the Child Paris (previously in the collection of Taddeo Contarini) and a Judgement of Paris, a “Fauola di Parride” (drawn copy in the inventory of the collection of Andrea Vendramin. (119)

The latter drawing is reproduced in the catalog as “after Giorgione.” The “Discovery of the Child Paris” originally in the Contarini collection only exists today in a seventeenth century copy. In my paper on the Tempest I have demonstrated that this “lost” Giorgione actually represents “The Encounter of the Holy Family with Robbers on the Flight into Egypt.”

If this pillar of Rapp’s interpretation falls to the ground, what happens to the whole edifice?

###

Jurgen Rapp: “the ‘Favola’ in Giorgione’s Tempesta.” Ferino-Pagden, Sylvia, and Nepi-Scire, Giovanna: exh. Cat. Giorgione, Myth and Enigma, Vienna, 2004. Pp. 118-123.

Interpreting Giorgione's Tempest: Salvatore Settis

No painting has received more interpretations than Giorgione's Tempest. Back in 2005 I felt that the way was open to my new interpretation of the painting as "The Rest on the Flight into Egypt" because the many previous interpreters had cancelled each other out. Nevertheless, I had to deal with the most important of these interpretations. Many years ago I posted reviews of these interpretations on this site, and would like to re-visit them this year. I begin with a review of Giorgione's Tempest by Salvatore Settis, the essential starting point for any student of Giorgione.

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 addition to providing an in depth analysis of practically every previous interpretation, Professor Settis also laid down a series of iconographical ground rules that should be used in any interpretation. 

For example, in his introduction he noted:

“Interpreting the Tempest means providing “a well documented explanation for each feature, and fitting all together into one persuasive framework.” (2)

Indeed, he came very close to identifying the subject of Giorgione’s most famous painting. At least he did see that the painting had a “sacred subject” but instead of seeing the Woman as Mary, the new or second Eve, he identified her as the original Eve nursing her first-born son, Cain. The Man in the painting is Adam in the guise of a Venetian aristocrat accompanying his wife after their expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

Even though his book is a must for anyone interested in Giorgione, his ingenious and painstaking interpretation came under serious criticism and was accepted by virtually no one. He argued that the famous painting must be treated like a puzzle and that in any interpretation all the pieces must fit, and fit easily without being squeezed into position. 

Unfortunately, he often violated his own maxim. The major pieces of the puzzle are the Man, the Woman and Child, the broken columns, the plant in the foreground, and the storm and city in the background. 

For Settis, the Man is Adam after the expulsion from the Garden of Eden. The nude Woman is Eve nursing her newborn son, Cain. The broken columns are a symbol of death which has entered the world as a result of sin. The plant is there to cover Eve’s nakedness, although obviously doing a very poor job. The city in the background is the lost Paradise forever barred to the Man and Woman who are doomed to a life of toil and hardship. The storm and lightning represent the wrath of God not only on the erring couple but also on what he called a serpent slithering into the rock beneath the heel of the woman. 

Here are his words concerning the Man and the Woman:

  “Adam leans, not on the short-handled spade of his Bergamo counterpart, but on a singularly long staff: various interpreters have agreed that this could be a soldier’s lance, a traveler’s wand or simply a generic tool. The allusion to the manual labor prescribed in the biblical text is underplayed, almost fleeting, for this Adam is an elegant Venetian…The medieval tradition portraying Adam at work…has evolved to show Adam at rest, with Eve as mother at his side….” (113)

 “The handsome clothes belong to a Venetian gentleman, not to a peasant or a fisherman, and are appropriate with the attenuated image of the tool:  in the hands of this meditative, or resting, figure the staff must allude to manual labour. Neither spade nor hoe, it has a point at one end but so hidden in the grass that it is only visible on a close and careful examination.” (114)

 “Eve is seated opposite him a white wrap that barely covers her. (sic) The baby in her lap and her own nakedness indicate recent childbirth, a familiar schema in earlier art. The slender bush that grows out in front of her cannot be a simple decoration in this painting of such deliberate construction: its compositional importance has already been noted by other interpreters…who have tried in vain to establish its meaning.” (115)

In chapter 4 Settis provided a number of images of Adam and Eve after their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. It was an impressive feat but in every image the Man and the Woman do not exhibit the disparity of clothed and unclothed figures found in the Tempest. 

For example, in Amadeo’s, Bergamo bas-relief, both Adam and Eve are nude, just as they are in Jacopo della Quercia’s relief in St Petronio in Bologna. In all the other images it is the same. Either Adam and Eve are both nude, or both clothed. 

The Adam in these images is always a rustic laborer, and not the poised Venetian aristocrat of Giorgione’s painting. This development is one of the main props for the “hidden subject” thesis proposed by Settis. Moreover, the Adam in these images is usually the central or focal point, but in the Tempest the Man directs the viewer’s attention to the Woman and Child.

The Woman’s nudity is only explained as a sign of “recent childbirth,” but the child in the Tempest is obviously almost a year old. He holds himself up nicely while nursing. Settis did not identify the plant in the Tempest, but he did argue that it is there to cover the Woman’s nakedness. He also argued that the dead root beneath the woman’s heel was not part of the plant but the “serpent” slithering into the rock fleeing God’s wrath.

Settis, like some others, argued that the lightning bolt in the background was a symbolic representation of God, and that it and the storm were hovering over the couple forever banished from Paradise. The gates of Paradise have forever been closed to them and the broken columns are symbolic of death. Yet according to the rules of perspective the storm and lightning bolt are miles in the distance. Moreover, in the foreground the couple is bathed in sunlight. They show no trace of fear, anxiety, or loss.

Speaking of Paradise, why would one of the buildings show an emblematic representation of Padua’s Carrara family? 

Salvatore Settis, Giorgione’s Tempest, Interpreting the Hidden Subject, Chicago, 1990.

Dr. Francis P. DeStefano

5/6/2011

Note: Below are some relevant notes from Settis' text.

Chapter 1. Subject and Non-Subject.

p.2. “If we can perceive the beauty of an object within its meaning and not outside it, within its history and not outside it, and if we can comprehend and not simply admire, attribute and acquire, perhaps then we can really slaughter the ‘art’ which we have invented and free it from a contrived immortality.”

p.2. “In the study of art…the history of form has gradually parted company from the history of content: ‘art criticism’ elaborates lists of attributions and comments on aesthetic value and is thus de facto opposed to iconology, which attempts to decipher the meaning of inherited images.”

p.3. “The great, regal, public museum,…the bourgeois drawing-room…In both of them statues and pictures are snatched from their original context, in which co-ordinates of meaning were mapped our around them, and are offered to the visitor for their aesthetic value only.”

p.4. “Art criticism has thus produced pages of exquisitely artistic prose which deliberately competes in stylistic effect with the picture it describes, as well as pages of awkwardly-phrased enthusiasm. But in both cases the cost has been a high one: by favoring form, the function of a statue or painting as bearer of a message…has been completely overshadowed.”

p.10. “A complete understanding of a statue or a painting should place the question of style within the framework of careful research on its meaning as a vehicle of communication, and on its ways of expressing that meaning. For form and content…are born at the same time…”

p.13. “Vasari’s words bear witness to the difficulties of understanding Giorgione’s subjects, even a few decades after his death….Bur Vasari must have momentarily lost his concentration when he looked at the four facades of the Fondaco….The few things we do know about the decoration of the Fondaco indicate a precise iconographical Programme, however disjointed its features may seem to be.”

C. 4.  Interpreting the Tempest,

p.82. “it is usually the case that we instantly recognize a picture  of a woman and child as Mary and Jesus….We recognize Virgin and Child above all by means of the many different images in our memory and form, as it were, a single type. It is visual experience itself, repeated over and over again, but always receptive, that tells us the title of the picture.” …

p.82. “But that memory can be lost; and when this happens an image that was created for a public that could understand it becomes incomprehensible to observers who are alien to that particular figurative culture. This can give rise to absurd and fantastic interpretations.”

c. 5. The Hidden Subject

p. 129. “In choosing a painting as a vehicle for expressing personal feelings, ‘inventiveness’ must have been severely hampered by the inescapable weight of authority represented by previous iconographic tradition. The transformation of an ‘interior subject’ into something less comprehensible entailed searching out an unusual iconography, and also perhaps attenuating its meaning by eliminating or toning down its essential features.”

p. 129/130. “Even more complex and difficult was the task of fitting a religious theme into this ‘closed’ and private use of art….But to a painter in the time of Palma il Vecchio and Giorgione, a Christian subject would have had a different weight….The codification of iconography for religious subjects must have been that much more forceful for being accepted as serving the true Christian faith. Equally, it was that more difficult to dare to choose a Christian theme as a way of expressing personal thoughts.”

Historical Imagination and the Venetian Renaissance

 

In my interpretation of Giorgione's Tempest I argued that the famous painting has a sacred subject: "The Rest on the Flight into Egypt." This discovery led to other interpretations of heretofore mysterious paintings as sacred subjects. See, for example, my interpretation of Titian's Sacred and Profane Love as "The Conversion of Mary Magdalen", and my interpretation of Giorgione's Three Ages of Man (Pitti Palace) as "The Encounter of Jesus with the Rich Young Man."

Since my initial discovery back in 2005, subsequent reading has led me to see that an increasing number of scholars are coming to understand the role that religion played in the life and art of Renaissance Venetians. Nevertheless, it is still hard to overcome the view that has prevailed for centuries that the Renaissance turned its back on Christianity in favor of the world of pagan Greece and Rome.

Titian: Vendramin family worshipping a relic of the Cross

For example, scholars sometimes point to the passage in the will of Gabriele Vendramin, the owner of the Tempest, where he directed that his collection not be dispersed or sold upon his death. He said that the collection had given him great consolation in moments of quiet contemplation. Scholars assume that he was contemplating the works of antiquity but the paintings in his collection were mainly "sacred" or devotional subjects. [Notice Titian: "Gabriele Vendramin with Brother and Nephews Venerating a Relic of the True Cross"] Indeed, the great majority of paintings found in the homes of Venetian patricians were of sacred subjects, including many versions of the "Rest on the Flight into Egypt."

In our modern world it takes a great amount of "historical imaginaton" to see things as Renaissance Venetians saw them.

Below find selections from two great scholars on the need for “historical imagination” for a correct understanding of the past. The first is from Piety and Patronage in Renaissance Venice, by the late Rona Goffen. Her small book is one of the best monographs ever written about the Venetian Renaissance. Referring to the importance of the sermons of Bernardino of Siena, and Lorenzo Giustiniani, the saintly first Patriarch of Venice, she wrote of the need for an historically informed imagination.

 In these and other similar passages, Bernardino and Giustiniani declared their belief in the Immaculacy of the Madonna. 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. [p.79]

Goffen stressed the need to see Renaissance Venice, especially its art, through the eyes of contemporary Venetians. She wrote,

 No Venetian--and no Venetian Franciscan--could have been unaware of the rich associations, both political and spiritual, of the Madonna in Venice, and indeed of the identification of the one with the other. after all, Venice, too, was apostrophized as a Virgin, always safe in the embrace of her beloved Evangelist St. Mark... [p. 145]

The second selection on the need for historical imagination comes from C.S. Lewis, whose greatness as a scholar is somewhat obscured today by the extraordinary success of his popular Narnia stories. Nevertheless, he was one of the greatest twentieth century students of Medieval and Renaissance literature. The following excerpt is taken from his small but brilliant study of Milton’s "Paradise Lost." In chapter IX of  A Preface to Paradise Lost,  Lewis discussed the need to see things through Milton’s eyes.

"Now when we read Paradise Lost,…Milton is on his own ground, and it is we who must be the learners... 

"Our whole study of the poem will then become a battle between us and the author in which we are trying to twist his work into a shape he never gave it, to make him use the loud pedal where he really used the soft, to force into false prominence what he took in his stride, and to slur over what he actually threw into bold relief. The older modern reading of Dante, with its disproportionate emphasis on the Inferno, and, within the Inferno, on the episode of Paolo and Francesca, is an example of this…." 

"Fortunately there is a better way. Instead of stripping the knight of his armour, you can try to put his armour on yourself; instead of seeing how the courtier would look without his lace, you can try to see how you would feel with his lace; that is, with his honour, his wit, his royalism, and his gallantries out of the Grand Cyrus. I had much rather know what I should feel like if I adopted the beliefs of Lucretius, than how Lucretius would have felt if he had never entertained them. The possible Lucretius in myself interests me more than the possible C.S. Lewis in Lucretius…." 

"You must, so far as in you lies, become an Achaean chief while reading Homer, a medieval knight while reading Malory, and an eighteenth century Londoner while reading Johnson. Only thus will you be able to judge the work ‘in the same spirit that its author writ’ and to avoid chimerical criticism…." 

"We must therefore turn a deaf ear to Professor Saurat when he invites us ‘to study what there is of lasting originality in Milton’s thought and especially to disentangle from theological rubbish the permanent and human interest.’…Our plan must be very different—to plunge right into the ‘rubbish’, to see the world as if we believed it, and then, while we still hold that position in our imagination, to see what sort of poem results…." 

"I myself am a Christian, and that some (by no means all) of the things which the atheist reader must ‘try to feel as if he believed’ I actually, in cold prose, do believe. But for the student of Milton my Christianity is an advantage. What would you not give to have a real, live Epicurean at your elbow while reading Lucretius?"

Let me just add a personal footnote.

A few years ago I attended a Giorgione symposium at Princeton on a cold Saturday in December.  Next day, my wife and I got up early to go to Mass at the Catholic church just across the street from the campus. It was December 12, the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, but still we were surprised to find a good sized congregation in attendance at the 7:00 a.m. Mass. Even more surprising was the display that filled one of the two side altars. There was an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe along with an incredible array of flowers that even included a colorful working fountain. Catholic churches are usually somewhat bare during the season of Advent.

Before beginning Mass the presiding priest, obviously Mexican, was on fire as he told the congregation of the story of Juan Diego and the miraculous appearance of Mary at Guadalupe almost 500 years ago. Most surprising was his announcement that 3 hours earlier, at 4:00 a.m., the church had been packed with over 600 worshippers gathered for prayers on the morning of this great feast. Afterwards, we discovered that there was a substantial community of Latino workers in Princeton.

I relate this story because it occurred to me that even the greatest and wealthiest of Renaissance Venetian patricians would have been closer in spirit to these 600 Latino worshippers than he would have been to the 100 or so learned art historians who had attended the Princeton symposium. To put it another way it would take a great deal of imagination for an ordinary American to understand the mentality that could get up at 4:00 a.m. on a dark, rainy, morning to go to church and fill it with beautiful flowers in honor of the Madonna.

You don't have to be a believer to understand the art of the Venetian Renaissance but you have to try to see through the eyes or ordinary believers. In lecturing on Giorgione's famous painting, I have found that ordinary Catholics have no difficulty in seeing the Madonna nursing her child in the Tempest.

 ###

 

Gabriele Vendramin and the Tempest.

 

Titian's depiction of Venetian patrician Gabriele Vendramin and his brother Andrea venerating (along with Andrea's seven children) a relic of the True Cross is as much a primary source about the owner of Giorgione's Tempest as any written document. Scholars are unsure which of the two men is Gabriele but nevertheless, he must have made it clear to Titian that he wanted to be depicted in an attitude of religious devotion. 

In 1530 Marcantonio Michiel saw the Tempest in the “portego” or salon of Gabriele Vendramin. It is generally considered to be the first historical reference to the painting. In his notes Michiel described the Tempest in this way. “The little landscape on canvas, representing stormy weather and a gipsy woman with a soldier, is by Giorgio di Castelfranco.” 

Despite this evidence, we cannot be certain that Vendramin initially commissioned the painting. I believe that it is more likely that he acquired it as he did other works of art by trade or purchase, perhaps after the death of the original owner. We do know that he prized his collection highly and insisted that it not be broken up or sold. However, other than the portraits listed in the inventory below, all of Vendramin's other paintings are of sacred subjects. For example, right after the Tempest entry, there is a  description of a version of a Flight into Egypt by Jan Scorel of Holland. 

Michiel’s notes were originally discovered in the early nineteenth century without an indication of the author. That is why the initial publication of the notes attributed them to the “anonimo.” The English translation of 1903 is available in paperback. References in the list below are to the page numbers in the paperback.

The Anonimo: Notes on Pictures and Works of Art in Italy Made by an Anonymous Writer in the Sixteenth Century, translated by Paolo Mussi, edited by George C. Williamson, London, 1903

In the House of Messer Gabrieli Vendramino: 1530.

The portrait of the same Messer Gabriel in half length, life size, in oil, on canvas, was painted by Giovannini del Comandador. The gold foliage decoration all around it was executed by the Priest Vido Celere. (122). 

The little landscape on canvas, representing stormy weather and a gipsy woman with a soldier, is by Giorgio di Castelfranco. (123)

The picture representing Our Lady with St. Joseph in the desert, is by John Scorel of Holland. (123)

The dead Christ in the Sepulchre, with the Angel supporting Him, is by Giorgio di Castelfranco, but was repainted by Titian. (123)

The three small portraits in tempera, one representing Messer Filippo Vendramino in a three-quarter view, and the others two young gentlemen in profile, are by Giovanni Bellini. (123)

The small oil picture on panel representing St. Anthony, with the portrait of Messer Antonio Siciliano in full length, is by…a Flemish master, and it is an excellent work, specially in the painting of the heads. (123)

124. The small oil picture on panel representing Our Lady standing up, crowned, with the Child in her arms, in a Flemish church, is by Roger of Bruges, and is a perfect work. (124)

 The portrait of Francesco Zanco Bravo, in chiaroscuro, with black ink, is by Giacometto. The large book of drawings, executed with a lead pencil on bombasin paper, is the work of Jacopo Bellini…. The two drawings in pen-and-ink, the one on vellum containing the history of Attila, and the other on bombasin paper representing the Nativity, are by Raphael.*  (125)

*The editor notes that even the drawing containing the history of Attila represents St. Peter and St. Paul appearing to Attila.

The only painting in Vendramin's collection that is not considered to be a sacred subject is the one we now call the Tempest. If we can see it as "The Rest on the Flight into Egypt," what does that tell us about the interests of Gabrielle Vendramin, and what does that tell us about the collections of the other Venetian patricians that Michiel described in his inventory? Most of those paintings were also sacred or devotional subjects.

###

Tempest Patron

 Giorgione's "Tempest" and the so-called "Discovery of Paris" might have been the two notte that Isabella D' Este sought to acquire on hearing the news of the painter's death in 1510. It is interesting to note that she, like other collectors, was not averse to acquiring paintings that had been commissioned by other patrons. Below, I reprise a post on the subject that includes speculation on the patron who might have originally commissioned the painting that has come to be called the Tempest.

Late in 1510 Isabella D’Este, Marchesa of Mantua and renowned art patron, tried to acquire a Giorgione painting only to discover that the young master had just died. Nevertheless, the indefatigable collector persisted. On October 25 she wrote to Taddeo Albano, her agent in Venice:

 “we hear that among the possessions left by Zorzo da Castelfranco, the painter, there is a picture of a Notte, very beautiful and original. If this is the case, we wish to have it, and beg your Lorenzo da Pavia or any other person of taste and judgment to go and see if it is a really excellent thing. If it is, I hope you will endeavor to secure this picture for me… Find out the price and let us have the exact sum; but if it is really a fine thing, and you think well to clench the bargain for fear others should carry it off, do what you think best…”

Albano replied on November 8:

“Most illustrious and honoured Madama mia,--
“I have spoken in your interests to some of my friends who were very intimate with him, and they assure me that there is no such picture among his possessions. It is true that the said Zorzo painted a Notte for M. Taddeo Contarini, which, according to the information which I have, is not as perfect as you would desire. Another picture of the Notte was painted by Zorzo for a certain Vittore Beccaro, which, from what I hear, is finer in design and better finished than that of Contarini. But Beccaro is not at present in Venice, and from what I hear neither picture is for sale, because the owners have had them painted for their own pleasure, so that I regret I am unable to satisfy Your Excellency’s wish.” *

Since that time scholars have not been able to agree on the identity of the two paintings mentioned in Albano’s letter. Neither have they been able to agree on what Isabella or Albano meant by “notte” since the word hardly appears elsewhere in descriptions of paintings.

However, from the correspondence we can say that both paintings were commissioned: “the owners have had them painted for their own pleasure.” The one that was not as “perfect” as Isabella would have desired was done for Venetian patrician, Taddeo Contarini. The other “notte”, the one “finer in design and better finished,” was done for Vittore Beccaro, of whom nothing else is known. Not only was Beccaro out of town at the time of Isabella’s inquiry, but he seems to have completely disappeared from history. 

Some scholars have argued that Isabella used “notte” or night scene to mean a Nativity or “presepio.” They have suggested that the Adoration of the Shepherds now in the National Gallery in Washington is the more perfect version, and that the same painting in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna is the less perfect one since it is obviously unfinished. This explanation hardly seems plausible since it is impossible to imagine that a patron like Taddeo Contarini would have prized an incomplete painting. Moreover, Isabella knew a Nativity when she saw one. A few years earlier when she corresponded with Giovanni Bellini about a Nativity, she never called it a “notte.”

David Teniers: copy of a lost Giorgione

In 1525 Marcantonio Michiel saw a painting in the house of Taddeo Contarini that could be called a night scene. Michiel noted that it represented “the birth of Paris in a landscape, with two shepherds standing.” He said it was by Giorgio di Castelfranco,” and indicated that it was one of his “early works.” Recently, Enrico dal Pozzolo suggested that this painting, of which only copies remain, was the one mentioned by Albano. He also suggested that the “more perfect” “notte” might be a “Hell with Aeneas and Anchises,” a painting that is now completely lost but which had somehow found its way into Contarini’s home by 1525. **

Pozzolo noted that a discovery of Paris coupled with an Aeneas and Anchises would mark the beginning and the end of the whole Trojan saga. However, this hypothesis is based on a misinterpretation of the “Discovery of Paris.” I have argued elsewhere that this lost Giorgione is a depiction of an episode on the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt. It is clear that in this early work Giorgione relied on a text from the apocryphal Arabic gospel of the Infancy.

Even from the copy of the “Discovery of Paris” done by David Teniers in 1655, we can see that it is not one of Giorgione’s most perfect works. This early effort seems crude in comparison with his later work. Since I have argued that Giorgione’s most perfect painting, La Tempesta, is also a depiction of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt. I believe it is safe to say that it was also the “notte”, “very beautiful and original,” that Isabella unsuccessfully sought to acquire right after Giorgione’s death in 1510.

Finally, I would like to speculate on the identity of Vittore Beccaro. Enrico dal Pozzolo suggested that the name implies that he might have been a butcher but it is hard to imagine, given Giorgione’s patrician patrons, that the Tempest was commissioned by an ordinary tradesman. It is true that Taddeo Albano claimed that Vittore Beccaro was the owner of the beautiful “notte”. But Albano got his information second or third hand from acquaintances. It is clear that he did not know the owner or even see the painting. At my age, it is easy to imagine that Albano could have rendered the name somewhat incorrectly.

Instead I would like to advise students to look in the direction of Bologna whose leading citizens included the Zambeccaro family. I also believe that some members of the family fled Bologna for Venice after Pope Julius II drove out the ruling Bentivoglio family in 1506.

At least one of the Zambeccaro was an art collector. In his biography of Franceso Francia, Giorgio Vasari said that Francia was a close friend of Polo Zambeccaro.

He lived in close intimacy with Messer Polo Zambeccaro, who being much his friend, and wishing to have some memorial of him, caused him to paint a rather large picture of the Nativity of Christ, which is one of the most celebrated works that he ever made; and for this reason Messer Polo commissioned him to paint at his villa two figures in fresco, which are very beautiful.***

The status of Polo Zambeccaro enabled him to commission a painting from a renowned painter like Francia. Moreover, he asked for a sacred subject, a Nativity, for his own private devotion. Polo Zambeccaro would have been the type of person who could have asked Giorgione, the up and coming favorite of the Venetian aristocracy, for "a picture of a Notte, very beautiful and original," a painting that would later be called the Tempest. It is still not for sale at any price.

###

                                          

*Isabella’s correspondence with Taddeo Albano can be found in Julia Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, Marchioness of Mantua, 1474-1539. London, 1932. For the Italian text see Jaynie Anderson, Giorgione, The Painter of Poetic Brevity, p. 362.

**Enrico dal Pozzolo: Giorgione, 1999, pp. 33-35.

***Vasari, Giorgio: Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, translated by Gaston Du C. De Vere, with an introduction and notes by David Ekserdjian. 2V, Everyman’s Library, 1996. Vol. 1, 581.