Norton Simon Duveen Exhibition Primadonna

Last year on a trip to California I visited the famed Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena to see a small painting ( 31.7 x 24.1 cm) that the Museum labels, “Head of a Venetian Girl.” The trustees of the Museum still like to attribute the painting to Giorgione even though the label indicates that most scholars today give it to Titian.

I revisited the Norton Simon this January to see an exhibition entitled “Lock, Stock, and Barrel: Norton Simon’s Purchase of Duveen Brothers Gallery” only to discover that the young Venetian had become the poster girl for the whole exhibition that began last October and will run until April 27 of this year. In its introduction to the exhibition, the Museum noted that the young girl or ‘courtesan’ played a key role not only in the exhibition but in the Museum’s history.

Behind the beguiling Portrait of a Courtesan lies one of the many fascinating tales of Norton Simon’s determination to assemble a remarkable collection of art.

The Museum’s excellent website and related video, narrated by curator Carol Togneri, give the full story but here is a brief summary. A few years after the close of the Second World War Norton Simon approached Duveen Brothers Gallery in New York City in an attempt to buy the aforementioned portrait of the young woman. Even back then, a Giorgione acquisition would have added immeasurably to Simon’s collection.

The firm of Duveen Brothers had been started by the legendary art dealer Joseph Duveen who died in 1939 after a long career dealing in Old Masters. Although Norton Simon had originally inquired about the painting of the young woman, he eventually offered to buy about a half dozen other Duveen holdings. Finally, as the process of negotiation went on, he offered to buy everything the Duveen Gallery owned including its Park Avenue mansion. The offer was accepted and  except the Park Avenue property everything went west to California.

Most of the Duveen holdings were put into storage and only a few of the major ones were ever publicly exhibited.  The current Duveen exhibition is the Museum’s attempt to exhibit a much larger sample of the entire acquisition. It has been beautifully mounted and displayed. Even the frames are well worth seeing.

Still, the small painting of the young woman has been given pride of place. Today even a small Giorgione or Titian is priceless. Earlier at Giorgione et al… I argued that the young girl or courtesan depicted in a partial state of undress was Mary Magdalen, one of the most popular subjects in the art of the Renaissance. I also believe that Giorgione portrayed Mary Magdalen in a similar pose and state of undress in the painting usually labeled “Laura”.

However, I would just like to add some words on the subject of the attribution. I agree with those scholars who give the painting to the young Titian who worked with Giorgione on the fresco decoration of the exterior walls of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi.  I am not good at stylistic analysis but I would say that the face of the young woman in the Norton Simon painting bears a close resemblance to the face of the adulteress in Titian’s “Christ with the Adulteress”, an early Titian now in the Glasgow Museum.  Indeed, contemporary Venetians tended to lump all the sinful women of the gospels into Mary Magdalen.

Secondly, the Norton Simon woman wears a multi-colored striped shawl over her shoulder. The same shawl can be seen in one of Titian’s much later depictions of Mary Magdalen. Can this be just a coincidence? 

During his long career Titian became the most prolific painter of Mary Magdalen. In my paper on the Sacred and Profane Love I have argued that the two women in that painting now in the Borghese Gallery both represent the Magdalen; one as courtesan and the other as repentant sinner. The Norton Simon "Portrait of a Young Girl" could well be Titian's first attempt while still under the influence of Giorgione.

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Titian at the Norton Simon Museum

On a recent trip to the Los Angeles area to visit one of my daughters I had an opportunity to visit the famed Norton Simon Museum in nearby Pasadena. The information brochure for the Museum indicated that in the twentieth century Norton Simon, a wealthy industrialist, accumulated “a renowned collection of Old Masters, Impressionists, Modern art, and masterpieces from India and Southeast Asia.” Simon’s collection found a home in Pasadena in 1974 when he and a new Board of Trustees took control of the former Pasadena Art Museum.

Despite the breadth of the collection and the beautiful grounds, I must confess that I went there to see a small painting that the Museum still attributes to Giorgione even though the label indicates that many scholars today give it to Titian.

The Museum calls the painting, “Head of a Venetian Girl” although it is more than a head. In his study of the early Titian Paul Joannides called it a “Bust of a Young Woman” but added “Courtesan” in parenthesis. He claimed that it was certainly by Titian and dated it around 1510. The painting is only 31.7 x 24.1 cm in size. It is so small that Joannides believed that it might be a fragment of a larger narrative. Nevertheless, the Museum has done a superlative job of hanging the painting. It is featured by itself behind glass in an entranceway to a large gallery. On the other side of the entrance is a small portrait by Giovanni Bellini of Joerg Fugger.

You can see why it might be called a courtesan because no respectable Venetian woman would have sat for a portrait in such a disheveled state. Joannides said that it brought to mind a Mary Magdalen but he quickly dismissed the idea. In an earlier post I have argued that his initial intuition was correct. I believe that this early Titian was one of the first of many versions of Mary Magdalen that he did during his long career.

Titian and other contemporaries liked to portray a beautiful Magdalen in a state of partial undress. They depicted her in the process of discarding her worldly finery after her conversion experience. It is not just the similarity to other paintings that would lead one to consider this woman as Mary Magdalen. There are certainly elements in the painting that suggest the great female saint.

Titian used her multi-colored striped shawl in a later, unmistakable depiction (Naples) of the penitent saint. It is true that there is no sign of her jar of ointment in the Norton Simon woman but standing in front of the painting I wondered why Titian had chosen to make this woman a redhead. Italian ladies today like red hair and some did try to bleach their hair during the sixteenth century but red hair seems to be mainly a characteristic of Mary Magdalen. Earlier Giovanni Bellini had depicted a striking red haired Magdalen without the ointment jar standing to one side of the Madonna and Child.

Moreover, as I was looking at the painting a security guard came over and cautioned me not to stand too close.  He turned out to be a graduate student and we discussed the painting. When I mentioned Mary Magdalen, he asked about the ring on her finger. It’s amazing how you can look at a painting so many times and still not see some details. I had never noticed the ring before but there it was on her left index finger. What is its significance? Is the ring one of her courtesan’s jewels or does it symbolize a bride of Christ? It is on the index and not the traditional wedding ring finger. Did women during this time wear their wedding bands on the index finger? In a version of the Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine Paris Bordone directs Catherine’s hand to the infant Jesus who holds a ring in his hand. Her index finger is pointed to receive it.

Some might say that it makes no difference if a painting is an unknown woman, a courtesan, or Mary Magdalen. On the flight home from California I read an essay by famed Art historian Erwin Panofsky in a collection of his writings entitled, “Meaning in the Visual Arts.” In the essay on Titian’s “allegory of Prudence,” Panofsky wrote:

In a work of art, “form” cannot be divorced from “content”; the distribution of color and lines, light and shade, volumes and planes, however delightful as a visual spectacle, must also be understood as carrying a more-than-visual meaning.

Art history is not the same thing as art appreciation. I believe the role of the art historian is to view the work of art as a window into the world of the past: to see things as the artist, his patron, and his contemporary viewers might have seen them. The paintings of Bellini, Giorgione and Titian are important primary sources for our understanding of the real nature of the Venetian Renaissance.

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