Giorgione's Tempest: the Storm:

In my paper on Giorgione’s Tempest I looked at all the iconographical elements in the famous painting and tried to not only identify them correctly but also to put them together in a coherent whole. I understood that no piece could be left out of the puzzle or forced into place. Here I repeat a post that originally appeared on February 7, 2013 about the storm in the background, the last piece of the puzzle.

Years ago I was an avid fan of jigsaw puzzles, especially landscapes. My method was to put all the end pieces together first as a kind of frame. Then, I would proceed to do the prominent figures in the foreground and put them in their appropriate spaces. Finally, the background landscape would be filled in with the usually blue sky saved for last.

In the past few posts I have been going through the process of re-examining the pieces of the Tempest puzzle. First, I discussed the broken columns in the mid-ground and showed that they were commonplace in depictions of the Rest of the Holy Family on the Flight into Egypt. In subsequent posts I elaborated on my discussion of the prominent figures in the foreground. In my paper I had claimed that the young man on the left holding a pilgrim’s staff is St. Joseph watching over the Madonna and Child, and in two posts I presented other contemporary examples of young, virile Josephs. I then discussed the nursing Woman and showed that the white cloth draped over her shoulders and the mysterious plant in front of her helped to identify her as the Madonna.

Now, only the city and stormy sky in the background remain in order to complete the puzzle. In my paper I discussed both city and storm and I agreed with those who have seen that the city in the background could be Padua under siege in 1509 during the War of the League of Cambrai. 

Yet, Renaissance paintings are known for having many levels of meaning. The subject of the painting is the “Rest on the Flight into Egypt,” and so the city in the background must be Judea from where the Holy Family had fled after Joseph had been warned to flee the murderous designs of King Herod. The storm would then represent the Massacre of the Holy Innocents.

In his great work on Medieval iconography, Emile Male discussed the liturgical importance of the Massacre.

The Massacre of the Innocents, which might seem to be an episode of secondary importance, is closely linked with the Christmas feast. In fact, during the three days following Christmas, the Church celebrates the Massacre of the Innocents along with the feasts of St. Stephen and St. John the Apostle. The liturgists tell us that the Church desired to gather around Christ’s cradle the innocent children and the proto-martyr who were the first to shed their blood for the faith; *

Many artists depicted the actual slaughter. Giotto and Duccio provided prominent early examples, and the subject was not uncommon in the Renaissance. Nineteenth century art maven Anna Jameson saw many depictions of the distasteful subject, on her many travels, but also noted that the Massacre could even be hinted at in versions of the Flight into Egypt.

In pictures of the Flight into Egypt, I have seen it introduced allusively into the background; and in the architectural decoration of churches dedicated to the Virgin Mother, as Notre Dame de Chartres, it finds a place, but not often a conspicuous place; it is rather indicated than represented. **

In my paper I argued that the storm clouds and lightning in the background of the Tempest can indicate the massacre of the Holy Innocents, a martyrdom that the Church had always regarded as intimately connected with the passion and death of Christ. I tried to show that storm clouds and lightning were not mere emblems but actual symbols of death and destruction. For example, Joachim Patenir, a Giorgione contemporary, darkened the sky above the city in the background of his depiction of the Rest on the flight into Egypt. 

Joachim Patenir: Rest on the Flight into Egypt

Here is Carlo Ridolfi’s description of a storm in a lost painting describing a scene of death and destruction by the early Titian.

It was then decreed by the senate that he should paint for the Sala del Gran Consiglio the armed encounter at Cadore between the imperial troops and the Venetians. In this work, he imagined the natural site of his hometown with the castle situated above on a high mountain where the flash from a lightning bolt in the form of an arrow is suspended and misty globes in the manner of clouds are forming, mixed among the terrors of the unexpected tempest; meanwhile the battlefield is obstructed by the horrible conflict of knights and foot-soldiers, some of whom were defending with their rapiers the imperial flag, stirred by the wind and boldly moving in the air. ***

Although not in a painting, Pietro Aretino gave a very vivid image of the scene of the Crucifixion in his “Humanity of Christ.”

Meanwhile the darkness which had lasted from the sixth hour to the ninth, grew so black that it seemed day had hidden beneath the cloak of night. The clouds driving through the air and obscuring vision resembled a thousand banners of vast size arrayed against the eye of the sun. The sky itself groaned in unprecedented horror. The pallid lightning flashed. The very globe appeared about to dissolve in mist. #

Finally, in my work on the Tempest I came to realize that the solitary bird on the rooftop in the painting comes from the Psalms and refers to Rachel lamenting her lost children. In the passage of Matthew’s gospel where Joseph is warned to flee to Egypt, the evangelist records the plight of the ”Holy Innocents,” and recalls the prophecy of Jeremiah,

A voice was heard in Ramah, sobbing and loudly lamenting: it was Rachel weeping for her children,…because they were no more. 

The solitary bird on the rooftop in the background of the “Tempest” has hardly been noticed or discussed in all the scholarly literature but it recalls the lamentation of Rachel.The source for the bird can be found in Psalm 102, one of the seven Penitential psalms. (Jerusalem Bible 102, v.7-8).

I live in a desert like the pelican,

In a ruin like the screech owl

I stay awake, lamenting

Like a lone bird on the roof 

There is a version of the “Rest on the Flight into Egypt” by Nicholas Poussin that now can be found in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is actually a depiction of the encounter with the young John the Baptist on the return of the Holy Family from Egypt. The Museum notes that they are surrounded by many cherubs. It is true that those in the trees have little wings but the ones on the ground do not. These I believe to be the Holy Innocents. They all look to be the same age as the infant Christ. 

 Poussin: Rest on the Flight into Egypt
Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

Edit: English Poussin scholar David Packwood has kindly supplied this information about the Poussin Rest.

Storm clouds do appear in Poussin's paintings of the Flight into Egypt, usually clouds and cross in a symbolic cluster surrounded by cherubs, who represent the Holy Innocents. See NP's Dulwich Flight and Cleveland one. I covered the New York "Rest on the Flight" in my Phd. It's possible that ALL the children represent the Innocents. There's a putto high up on the tree who has his arms outstretched in an "orans" gesture- and I think Poussin might have been alluding to the cross here, The iconography is very complex in this picture. Did you see the butterflies? I think these are symbols of the infants' soul. Some scholars think that the lake behind the children could allude to baptism. Diana di Grazia wrote a long article about it for the Poussin Cleveland conference way back in the 90s.There's lots of stuff on the Innocents in that. It's also significant that the children are the same age of Christ in the New York picture. According to Counter-Reformation doctrine and debates on infant baptism, Christ was the saviour of infants. Finally, I think the NY picture has a Neapolitan provenance. Significant because one of Poussin's patrons- the poet Marino- came from Naples and wrote a poem about the Massacre of the Innocents, which heavily influenced Poussin.

*Emile Male: Religious Art in France, the Thirteenth Century, Princeton, 1858, p. 186.

**Anna Jameson: Legends of the Madonna, Boston, 1885, p. 353.

*** Carlo Ridolfi: the Life of Titian, Penn State, 1996, p. 75.

# James Cleugh:The Divine Aretino. NY, 1966, 99. 196-7

Giorgione: More Tempests

Giorgione’s most famous painting is called the “Tempest” because of the storm that dominates the background. Why did Giorgione use this device? Was it his own invention or did he rely on a motif common during his time? Are there other examples?

Giorgione: TheTempest

Three years after Giorgione’s untimely death in 1510, his younger associate Titian, who had worked with him on the fresco cycle on the Fondaco dei Tedeschi received a commission from the Venetian government to paint a battle scene for one of the rooms in the Ducal palace. Here is Carlo Ridolfi’s account from his biography of Titian written in the mid seventeenth century.

It was then decreed by the senate that he should paint for the Sala del Gran Consiglio the armed encounter at Cadore between the imperial troops and the Venetians. In this work, he imagined the natural site of his hometown with the castle situated above on a high mountain where the flash from a lightning bolt in the form of an arrow is suspended and misty globes in the manner of clouds are forming, mixed among the terrors of the unexpected tempest; meanwhile the battlefield is obstructed by the horrible conflict of knights and foot-soldiers, some of whom were defending with their rapiers the imperial flag, stirred by the wind and boldly moving in the air.*

Titian: Battle of Cadore (engraving)

The editors of a modern translation of Ridolfi note that Titian’s painting was begun between 1513 and 1516 but that it was only completed in 1537-8. The also point out that the painting was destroyed by fire in 1577 and that Ridolfi was confused about the subject, since the battle depicted was a legendary battle of Spoleto in which Venetian forces did not take part.

Nevertheless, either the painting was described to Ridolfi or he saw an engraving made before the fire. Despite the confusion about the subject, there seems no reason to doubt that shortly after Giorgione’s death Titian used a storm and a bolt of lightning to indicate a scene of violent death and destruction taking place below.

Joachim Patenier was another contemporary of Giorgione. In one of his many versions of the “Rest on the Flight into Egypt”, now in the Prado and dated around 1515, Patenier painted a storm in the left background above the city from which the Holy family had fled. The narrative follows their route since we see the legendary wheat field in the right mid-ground. The field is bathed in light and the sky above is blue with a couple of white clouds. The Madonna and Child sit in the foreground also bathed in bright sunlight.

Joachim Patenier: Rest on the Flight into Egypt

The stormy clouds in the background above the city indicate another scene of death and destruction. This time it is not a battle but the Massacre of the Holy Innocents. It was not uncommon to see some reference to the Massacre in versions of the flight into Egypt.

Finally, although not a painting, Pietro Aretino’s gave a very vivid image of the scene of the Crucifixion in his “Humanity of Christ.”

Meanwhile the darkness which had lasted from the sixth hour to the ninth, grew so black that it seemed day had hidden beneath the cloak of night. The clouds driving through the air and obscuring vision resembled a thousand banners of vast size arrayed against the eye of the sun. The sky itself groaned in unprecedented horror. The pallid lightning flashed. The very globe appeared about to dissolve in mist.**

Once again dark clouds interspersed with lightning cover a scene of death and destruction. Could Tintoretto have been aware of Aretino’s description?

Tintoretto: Crucifixion

Aretino’s popular religious work was written twenty five years after the death of Giorgione but the origins of his imagery can be found much earlier. In 1538 Aretino quarreled with Niccolo Franco, one of his many hangers on, and threw him out of his house. In his biography of Aretino James Cleugh printed Franco’s letter justifying his behavior.

The Aretine cannot say I am ungrateful’—he wrote to the scholar Francesco Alunno,…’for even though I admit he sometimes fed me, he cannot deny that I repaid this courtesy sevenfold by the work I did for him. Everyone knows that if it had not been for me he would not have had the skill to translate all those legends of the Holy fathers which he embroiders and passes off as his own.*** 

It would appear that many of the details in Aretino’s “Humanity of Christ” came from earlier but now forgotten popular religious works.

In each of these three examples a storm signals a tragedy going on below. I have argued that in the “Tempest” Giorgione's painted a version of the “Rest on the Flight into Egypt” where he used the storm and lightning for much the same purpose. Just as in Patinier’s painting Giorgione's Madonna and Child rest in bright sunlight while the storm rages over the city of Bethlehem in the background.

Moreover, in my interpretation I agreed with those who had argued that the city in the background of Giorgione’s painting could also be Padua during the War of the League of Cambrai. In 1509 Padua had been lost, retaken, but then besieged by Imperial forces over the summer. The storm of war was indeed over the city.

Scholars should consider looking for the source of the storm not in antiquity or humanist tracts but in popular vernacular religious stories. They might also consider the theatrical performances so popular in Italy during this time.

On a visit to her home town of Ferrara in 1503 Isabella d’Este, the famed Marchioness of Mantua, attended an elaborate dramatization at the Archbishop’s house on the occasion of the feast of the Annunciation. She wrote,

I…saw the wooden stage which had been erected for the occasion. A young Angel spoke the argument of the play, quoting the words of the Prophets who foretold the Advent of Christ, and the said Prophets appeared, speaking their prophecies translated into Italian verse. Then Mary appeared, under a portico supported by eight pillars, and began to repeat some verses from the Prophets, and while she spoke, the sky opened, revealing a figure of God the Father, surrounded by a choir of angels, and six other seraphs hovered in the air, suspended by chains. On the center of the group was the Archangel Gabriel, to whom God the Father addressed His word, and after receiving his orders, Gabriel descended with admirable artifice, and stood, half-way in the air, at the same height as the organ. Then, all of a sudden, an infinite number of lights broke out at the foot of the angel-choir, and hid them in a blaze of glory…At that moment the Angel Gabriel alighted on the ground, and the iron chain  which he held was not seen, so that he seemed to float down on a cloud, until his feet rested on the floor. After delivering his message he returned with the other angels to heaven, to the sound of singing and music and melody…when they had ascended into heaven, some scenes of the Visitation of St. Elizabeth and St. Joseph were given, in which the heavens opened again and an angel descended,…to manifest the Incarnation of Jesus to Joseph, and set his doubts to rest regarding the Conception of the Holy Virgin. So the festa ended. #

One can only imagine what special effects they might have used in celebrations of the Adoration of the Magi, or the Massacre of the Innocents.

It could also be that Giorgione and Titian were both just painting from nature. In all my years I have never heard a thunderstorm so violent and dramatic as the one I witnessed on a visit to beautiful Lake Garda a few years ago. All night long lightning flashed and thunder reverberated back and forth through the foothills of the Dolomites not far from the respective birthplaces of both Giorgione and Titian. ###

*Ridolfi, Carlo: The Life of Titian, edited by Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella, Bruce Cole, and Jody Robin Shiffman, Penn State, 1996, p. 75.This biography of Titian was part of a larger work, “Le Maraviglie dell’arte ovvero le vite degli illustri pittori veneti e dello stato,” originally printed in 1648.

**Quoted in Cleugh, James: The Divine Aretino, NY, 1966, p. 196-7.

***Cleugh, p. 174.

# Cartwright, Julia, Isabella D’Este, Marchioness of Mantua, 1474-1539, London, 1932, v.1, p. 251.