“In the Age of
Giorgione”, the exhibition currently at the Royal Academy of the Arts in
London, has generated much discussion about the attribution of many of the
paintings on display. Giorgione, in particular, never signed his work, and there
is little documentary evidence given his early death in 1510 at about the age
of 33.
The London Review
of Books recently featured a long review of the exhibition by renowned art
historian Charles Hope. Hope entered the attribution debate and argued that
less than half the paintings in the exhibition have certain attributions. In
particular, as he has done in the past, Hope questioned the attributions of
many paintings usually given to Giorgione, the star of the show. Hope went so
far as to suggest that since only a handful of paintings can definitely be
attributed to the young master from Castelfranco, it is almost impossible to
assess Giorgione’s impact on the Venetian Renaissance.
Nevertheless,
even Hope agreed that some paintings can definitely be attributed to Giorgione,
among which are the Accademia’s Tempest,
and the Kunsthistorisches Museum’s Three
Philosophers, both of which depict figures in a landscape. Hope did not
mention a lost Giorgione painting of figures in a landscape that we have in a
seventeenth century copy by David Teniers. It is usually called the Discovery of Paris, and its attribution
to Giorgione is certain because, like the other two, it was briefly described
in the notes of contemporary Venetian patrician and art collector, Marcantonio
Michiel. Here are his brief descriptions of the three paintings. *
The Tempest: “The little landscape on canvas, representing stormy weather and a gipsy woman with a soldier, is by Giorgio di Castelfranco.” [123]
The Three Philosophers: “The canvas picture in oil, representing three Philosophers in a landscape, two of them standing up and the other one seated, and looking up at the light, with the rock so wonderfully imitated, was commenced by Giorgio di Castelfranco and finished by Sebastiano Veneziano. [102]
The Discovery of Paris: “The picture on canvas, representing the birth of Paris, in a landscape, with two shepherds standing, was painted by Giorgio di Castelfranco, and is one of his early works.” (104)
In a footnote the
editor of Michiel’s notes provided a fuller description of the Discovery of Paris from a manuscript
catalogue of the mid-seventeenth century.
“A landscape on
canvas, in oil, where there are on the one side two shepherds standing; on the
ground a child in swaddling-clothes, and on the other side, a half nude woman
and an old man, seated, with a flute. It is seven spans and one inch and a half
wide, and nine spans and seven inches and a half long.”
What are we to
make of these three landscapes with figures in the foreground? What do they
tell us about Giorgione and his age? Anyone familiar with the Venetian
Renaissance would know that there has never been any agreement about the
subject of the Tempest. An incredible
number of interpretations have been put forward and all have been shot down. Hardly
anyone accepts Michiel’s description of the man and woman in the painting as a
soldier and a gypsy.
Scholars are
also divided about the subject of the Three
Philosophers. Before the discovery of Michiel’s notes in 1800, the three
men in the painting were regarded as the Three Magi, but Michiel’s description
has not only given the painting its current name, but also has sent scholars
searching for the particular philosophers represented. Today, it would appear
that the Magi are making a comeback.
However, there
has never been any disagreement on the subject of the Discovery of Paris. Scholars have been unanimous in accepting
Michiel’s description although they usually prefer the “discovery” or “finding”
of Paris, rather than the “birth” of the Trojan prince.
In my
interpretation of the Tempest as The Rest on the Flight into Egypt, I
included a discussion of the so-called Discovery
of Paris in which I argued that the unanimous opinion of art historians was
wrong. The painting bears little resemblance to the mythological story of the
birth of Paris, but is almost a literal depiction of one of the popular
apocryphal legends of the time: the encounter of the Holy Family with robbers
on the Flight into Egypt.
The interpretations
of the Tempest and the Discovery of Paris may be found at my
website, MyGiorgione. Here I just offer a short passage from the Arabic Gospel
of the Infancy.
Joseph and the
lady Mary departed and came to a desert place, and when they heard that it was
infested with raids by robbers, they decided to pass through this region by
night. But behold, on the way they saw two robbers lying on the road, and with
them a crowd of robbers who belonged to them, likewise sleeping. Now these two
robbers, into whose hands they had fallen, were Titus and Dumachus. And Titus
said to Dumachus: ‘I ask you to let these (people) go free, and in such a way
that our companions do not observe them.’ But Dumachus refused and Titus said
again:
‘Take from me
forty drachmae and have them as a pledge.’ At the same time he reached him the girdle
which he wore round him, that he might hold his tongue and not speak. **
The painting is a
night scene with the sun setting in the background. The band of robbers is
shown sleeping in the mid-ground. In the foreground there is an old man playing
a pipe, a reclining woman with arms and leg exposed, and an infant lying on the
ground upon a white cloth. To the right are two men whose clothing is in
disarray. One of the men has obviously removed his “girdle”, and given it to
the other who is wrapping it around his waist.
All of these
details are explained in my paper and they indicate that the Discovery of Paris has a sacred subject.
If so, not only are all previous opinions fanciful, but also the conclusions
drawn from the painting about Giorgione and his age are also fanciful. Although
not as famous as the Tempest and the Three Philosophers, scholars have
attached great importance to the lost Giorgione painting.
In an essay in
the Frick Museum’s recent exhaustive study of Giovanni Bellini’s St. Francis in the Desert, Susannah
Rutherglen examined the actual manuscript of Michiel’s notes and discovered that
the Discovery of Paris and the St. Francis were not only in the home of
Venetian patrician Taddeo Contarini but that they were hung together in the
same private inner room. Rutherglen
puzzled over the incongruity of an obviously devotional work like the St. Francis next to a painting of a
scene from ancient mythology, and came up with a fanciful conclusion.
In a third
chamber, Michiel encountered St. Francis together with a painting by the
youthful Giorgione, Finding of the Infant
Paris, now lost but known through a copy by David Teniers the Younger. The
pairing of Bellini’s religious masterpiece with this mythological work—at first
glance surprising—suggests that both pictures were recognized as large-scale
achievements by masters in the vanguard of Venetian painting, sharing inventive
subject matter and mountainous landscape settings. ***
Rutherglen was
following in the footsteps of Enrico dal Pozzolo, a Giorgione specialist, who
attached great importance to the Discovery
of Paris and another lost Giorgione, described by Michiel as “Aeneas and
Anchises”.
the Birth of Paris
and the probable flight of Aeneas and Anchises from Troy constitute the
beginning and the end of the Trojan saga. These specific subjects had seemingly
never been represented in Venetian painting before Giorgione; but they were
afterwards, and also in paintings by artists (both anonymous and identifiable)
who were bound with the master of Castelfranco’s activity….#
Dal Pozzolo went even further and
argued that the Discovery of Paris
provided a window into Taddeo Contarini’s interest in classical antiquity. Contarini,
he said,
judged the artist
to be capable of painting on canvases that were not of the usual size…episodes
that were not found in other Venetian houses, and that in all likelihood
reflected the patron’s very personal interest in classical antiquity, an
interest which he somehow passed on to the painter….But, if we look even more
closely, the most singular feature of the Paris is that the entire composition
revolves around the small, naked body placed at the centre of the scene, much akin
to a Child Jesus adored by an extended “sacred family of shepherds.” The child
is displaying his virile member which, more than any other detail, could
evoke—the sexual prowess that would at first lead to his passion for Helen, and
then to the ruin of Troy. #
If it actually is
the Child Jesus “placed at the centre of the scene"in Giorgione’s lost
painting, what conclusions should we draw? The interpretation would then lend weight to those who
believe that the Three Philosophers
is a depiction of the Three Magi when they first beheld the Star of Bethlehem,
another apocryphal legend. Both would then lend weight to my interpretation of
the Tempest as Giorgione’s
idiosyncratic depiction of the traditional and popular story of the Rest of the
Holy Family on the Flight into Egypt.
###
###
*The Anonimo, Notes on
Pictures and Works of Art in Italy made by an Anonymous Writer in the Sixteenth
Century: ed. By George C. Williamson, London, 1903. All references to
Michiel are from this edition of his notes with page numbers in parentheses.
**Extract from
the Arabic Infancy Gospel in Edgar Hennecke, New Testament Apocrypha, edited by Wilhelm Schneemelcher, English
translation edited by R. McL. Wilson, Volume One, Philadelphia 1963. p. 408. On
the web a search for the First Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus, Chapter.
VIII, will give the story with slightly different wording.
***Susannah Rutherglen and Charlotte Hale: In a New Light, Giovanni Bellini’s St. Francis in the Desert. The Frick Collection.
New York, 2015, p. 56.
# Enrico Maria dal Pozzolo: Giorgione, Milan, 2009, p. 264.
