Giorgione and Cima da Conegliano

In the Tempest Giorgione raised the iconography of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt to a new level. He took the Madonna off of her interior throne and placed her outside on the ground nursing her infant Son. Both her pose and the setting are very naturalistic.

Giorgione’s depiction of a nude Madonna was unprecendented but his placement of her in a landscape can find an antecedent in the work of Cima da Conegliano. At least two works by Cima can be considered as versions of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt. Each portray a Madonna in a landscape with St. Joseph and other figures. In the first, the Madonna dell' Arancia, Joseph is barely visible in the background with the Ass. In the second, now in the Calouste Gulbenkian collection, Joseph has a much more prominent role. In both cases the Madonna sits on a rocky earthern throne that could well be Cima's way of depicting the remains of the Egyptian idols and temples that crumbled after the arrival of the infant Jesus into Egypt. In his study of Correggio, David Ekserdjian noted the innovative character of Cima's work.

Giovanni Battista Cima da Conegliano
Madonna dell' Arancio
Accademia, Venice

The North Italian who comes nearest to the concept of the sacra conversazione in a pure landscape is Cima da Conegliano… the two monumental examples in his work are not straight forward Madonnas with Saints, but rather Rests on the Flight into Egypt. The earliest is probably Cima’s famous Madonna dell’Arancio. It is evidently an altarpiece, and the earliest reference to it records its presence in the church of the Franciscan convent of Santa Chiara on Murano, presumably its original location,…It departs radically from what was by this time the accepted way of showing the Virgin and Saints in Venice, to which Cima normally adhered. …this innovation is linked with the fact that the painting is strictly speaking a Rest on the Flight into Egypt. Although he is generally ignored, the figure of Joseph with the ass is included in the background, and alerts us to the fact. The rejection of the usual architectural surround for the saints is a notable step forward, and the Virgin’s throne has become a rocky knoll with the tree behind her providing a strong vertical accent.*

Giovanni Battista Cima da Conegliano
Sacra Conversazione (Rest on the Flight into Egypt)
ca. 1500

Rona Goffen described a later "Rest" by Cima in her study of the Calouste Gulbenkian collection. She noticed that Cima again used the rocky throne for the Madonna, and that Joseph now has been brought prominently into the foreground. Also, note that the two angels standing on either side of the Madonna are often portrayed in versions of the Rest as guides and providers.

Cima’s Sacra Conversazione is set in an expansive mountain landscape, evoking his native city of Conegliano (on the mainland near Venice), suffused with light and air, and permeated with a sense of the harmonious existence of man in nature. The Madonna is enthroned, so to speak, on a platform of rocks. Above her, a tree punctuates her central position and suggests the canopy of an earthly monarch’s throne. Thus Cima represents at once two apparently contradictory themes: the Virgin enthroned as Queen of Heaven and also as the Madonna of Humility, seated upon the rocky ground. Graciously, and yet with an air of abstraction, Mary inclines her head to her right, toward St. John the Baptist with his cross. The saint closes the composition at the left by turning inward and pointing toward Christ, that is, identifying Him as the Lamb of God. Meanwhile, the Infant bends in the opposite direction, toward his left and St. Lucy, identified by her martyr’s palm (in her left hand) and by her burning lamp.

Cima’s famous altarpiece, the Madonna dell’Arancio (Venice, Accademia), dating from the mid- 1490s, is the prototype of his Madonna in the Gulbenkian collection. There are several significant changes, however. The vertical emphasis of the altarpiece is replaced in the Gulbenkian panel by the horizontal format favored by Venetian artists in the early sixteenth century, and suggests a date of around 1500. Moreover, in translating his compositional ideas from a large altarpiece to a small image for private devotion, Cima appropriately represented a more intimate scene of the Holy Family, in which Joseph appears with Mary and the Child, rather than in the background. Such a representation of the complete group very likely appealed to the personal piety of the private household for which Cima would have painted this image. **

I question the contradiction that Goffen pointed out between a Queen of Heaven and a Madonna of Humility. I don't believe that a Renaissance artist ever set out to portray a Madonna of Humility. This phrase is a later invention that was employed to describe a Madonna sitting outdoors in a landscape. It would be better if every so-called Madonna of Humility were understood as some episode from the flight into Egypt.

*David Ekserdjian, Correggio, Yale, 1997. p.200.

**Rona Goffen, Museums Discovered: The Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, 1982. p. 60.

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Giorgione and Correggio

Correggio: Rest on the Flight into Egypt with St. Francis.

My interpretation of the Tempest as the “Rest on the Flight into Egypt” explained the “nudity” of the Woman as Giorgione’s way of depicting Mary’s Immaculate Conception. Was there something going on at the time that would conflate the iconography of the “Rest” with that of the “Immaculate Conception”?

In discussing the famed Grimani Breviary last week I wondered if it was more than a coincidence that the last two images in that extraordinary collection of images should be “The Rest on the Flight into Egypt,” and the “Immaculate Conception.”

The editor of the Levenger press modern facsimile edition noted in his introduction the Franciscan influence in the whole collection. Is there any other evidence that the Rest and the Immaculate Conception were somehow linked in Franciscan spirituality?

In 1975 Sheila Schwartz’s doctoral dissertation, “The Iconography of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt,” was the first and maybe the only full study of the subject. It was a brilliant, exhaustive study, done at NYU under the guidance of Colin Eisler. Unfortunately, it was never published and Dr. Schwartz subsequently went on to other things.

Nevertheless, she was also struck by the incongruity of the “Rest” iconography and the “Immaculate Conception” Of a work by Correggio, she wrote,

“With Correggio’s “Rest on the Flight with St. Francis…of ca. 1516-18, painted for the Church of San Francisco at Correggio, we have the first documented altarpiece with the “Rest” as its subject.” p. 140.

But she was puzzled by its placement in a chapel dedicated to the Immaculate Conception.

“ why should Munari (or anyone else) have commissioned an altarpiece of the “Rest on the Flight” for a Chapel dedicated to the Immaculate Conception? There was never a theological association made between the two themes and the traditional relationship between chapel dedication and altarpiece is not easily ignored. It seems most likely that Correggio’s “Rest” was painted for another part of San Francesco and only later moved to the Cappella della Concezione, perhaps during the sixteenth-century alterations of the Church or the restoration of the Chapel in 1572.” pp. 142-143.

Almost 20 years later David Ekserdjian referred to Schwartz’s discussion of the Munari chapel and tried to offer another solution.

“There remains the problem of whether there is any way in which the Immaculate Conception can be regarded as logically illustrated by the Rest…”

“It is as well to admit that I have no theological justification to put forward to explain why a Rest should serve as an illustration of the Immaculate Conception, but there are grounds for at least considering the possibility. The Immaculate Conception was a distinctively Franciscan iconography at this time, and there is no reason why San Francesco should not have a chapel dedicated to the Immaculate Conception. What is more, the iconography of the Immaculate Conception was far from fixed at this time.”

David Ekserdjian, “Correggio”. Yale, 1997. pp. 70-75

Ekserdjian did not precisely date this painting but gave it to Correggio’s “early period.” Schwartz put it between 1516 and 1518. Correggio, Cardinal Grimani, and Giorgione were contemporaries. Again, at this time was there something in Franciscan spirituality that linked the iconography of the “Rest on the Flight into Egypt” with the “Immaculate Conception”?

Perhaps someday a student will discover a text that provides such a link. For now, I would like to hazard a guess.

The twelfth chapter of the Book of Revelation (Apocalypse) begins with “a great sign” that appeared in heaven. It was the image of “a woman, adorned with the sun, standing on the moon, and with the twelve stars on her head for a crown.” The woman was pregnant and gave birth to a son “who was to rule all the nations.” Both mother and child were threatened by the “dragon” but the son “was taken straight up to God and to his throne, ‘while the woman escaped into the desert, where God had made a place of safety ready…”

As David Ekserdjian noted the iconography of the “Immaculate Conception” was far from fixed at the time of Giorgione but the image of the “woman, clothed with the sun” was becoming identified with Mary and beginning to be used in depictions of her “Immaculate Conception.” The Grimani Breviary contained such an image.

In the Book of Revelation the Woman flees into the desert where she is pursued and threatened by the dragon who has been cast down to earth. We are told “she was given a huge pair of eagle’s wings to fly away from the serpent into the desert, to the place where she was to be looked after for a year and twice a year and half a year.”

Despite some obvious discrepancies, there is enough imagery in the Book of Revelation to provide a source for linking the “Immaculate Conception” with the flight of the Holy Family into the Egyptian desert.





Here is another depiction by Correggio of the "Rest on the Flight into Egypt," sometimes called the "Madonna della Scodella" from the little dish she holds in her hand.