Titian: Pastoral Concert continued

In my last post I discussed my interpretation of Titian's Pastoral Concert which I originally published in 2013. This post is designed to draw attention to an interpretation of the Fete Champetre or Pastoral Concert published in 1999 by Dr. Christiane Joost- Gaugier. The article, “The mute poetry of the Fete champetre: Titian’s memorial to Giorgione” appeared in the January 1999 issue of the Gazette des Beaux Arts. As the title suggests, Dr. Joost-Gaugier attributed the famous painting to Titian and regarded it as a memorial to the recently deceased Giorgione.

I originally published my interpretation of the painting on my now defunct website, MyGiorgione, in May, 2013. Since then, I have published the full paper it on academia.edu. I believed then and still do that the famous painting that hangs in the Louvre is indeed a homage by the young Titian to Giorgione. Only afterwards did I discover that Dr. Joost-Gaugier had seen the same thing back in 1999. *

Initially, this discovery was embarrassing since I should have found Dr. Joost- Gaugier's interpretation earlier. However, it became somewhat comforting to find that I had come independently to a similar conclusion with someone of her stature, knowledge, and experience. I also found that the technical evidence of the underpainting presented in her article also supported my paper. 

Nevertheless, while I agree with much of Dr. Joost-Gaugier's analysis, I do have disagreements with some of the conclusions she drew from her insights. I will explore both the areas of agreement and disagreement in this review article. 

In an abstract to her paper Dr. Joost-Gaugier laid out her thesis.

This paper will attempt to propose a new reading of this most unusual, indeed unique, picture which will suggest that it was initiated by Giorgione as a poesia based on an antique theme but incorporating his views about painting and, after his death completed by the grieving young Titian who, inspired by Virgil, turned the painting into a memorial to his beloved master who is portrayed as the center around which the entire composition and subject revolve. It will also suggest that Titian valued this painting as a private painting. (2)

Dr. Joost-Gaugier observed that the focus of the painting, despite the scholarly interest in the two nude women, was the young man in the center clothed in red. 

Indeed, the brilliance of his presence makes it clear that he, and not the nude women who have so intrigued former viewers is at the center of the painting…. In contrast to the soft beiges, browns, and olive colors which prevail elsewhere in the painting, the glowing reds of his mantle and hat accentuate the centrality and importance of his presence. (5)

She identified the man in red as Giorgione but saw signs, as I did years later, that he has died. 

Contrary to what many observers have assumed, the brilliantly colored young man at the center of the painting is not playing his instrument. Indeed, his instrument has no strings, a fact that has gone unnoticed and which is assured by the evidence of x-rays. Nor does the protagonist of the painting sing. His lips are closed. In fact, his head is averted so as to cause his features to be lost in deep shadow and darkness. From him there is only silence. He is playing but not playing, singing but not singing. He is seen but not seen. 

The other young man, dressed in plain, rustic garb would then possibly be Titian.

The suggested identification of the young lutist as Giorgione leads to another possibility. Perhaps his companion—who focuses his respect as well as his energies on the main actor—is a self-portrait of the younger Titian who expresses his devotion in a moment of quiet reverence. (6)

In regard to the two nude women, Dr. Joost-Gaugier differed from earlier scholars who regarded them as wood nymphs or muses invisible to the men. For her, the four figures in the painting are “distinctly human beings.” Moreover, both women are the same.

The same figure is represented from the front…and from the back, suggesting different modes or tempos for the engagement of the beholder. (4)

She then speculated that the woman was actually Giorgione’s lover who also died of the plague, and that Giorgione had originally begun the painting in her memory. 

The fact that the two women appear to have been painted from the same model suggests that they may refer to the woman with whom Giorgione had fallen in love shortly before his death. (6)

In summing up Dr. Joost Gaugier believed that while the painting has an Arcadian mood based possibly on an eclogue by Virgil, Giorgione had begun the painting shortly before his own death of the plague as a poetic memorial of his recently deceased lover but that Titian then altered it into a memorial of Giorgione himself. 

Taken together, the above observations show that this painting is neither a “Fete Champetre” nor a “Pastoral Concert, nor a (live) concert at all. They suggest rather a funeral motif.

In my paper I also saw that the elegantly dressed man with the lute is Giorgione, and the other more simply dressed man is Titian. I agree that the painting is Titian’s homage to the recently deceased Giorgione. 

I agree that the absence of strings on the lute is a sign that Giorgione has died and will play no more. I also agree that Giorgione’s face in shadow is another sign of death. Titian would use it later in a crucifixion scene. I went a little further though in seeing another sign of death in the pouring action of the nude on the left. I see her pouring Giorgione’s spirit into the well. 

Moreover, I believe that the dark sky in the background is also a sign of death. I did not mention it in my paper because I could not be certain that the dark sky was original or just the result of aging. Dr. Joost-Gaugier’s examination of the underpainting indicates that the original sky is cloudy and certainly not the appropriate background for a pleasant pastoral idyll.

I agree that the two nude women are one and the same, but I do not believe that they are human. I follow Fehl, Wind, and Egan in this regard but go further and argue that she is Euterpe, the muse of lyric poetry. **

I find it difficult to accept the suggestion that the painting was initially begun by Giorgione as a memorial to his deceased lover, or that the unfortunate woman is depicted in the painting. According to Vasari’s sources, Giorgione died of the plague after contact with his lover. Death for both of them would have been rapid and within days of each other.  He would have been in no shape physically or emotionally to commence a tribute to his lover. A recent discovery indicated that Giorgione spent his last days away from his studio in quarantine on an island in the lagoon.

Moreover, if he meant the painting as a tribute to his lover, why would he include Titian in the painting? Why would he have shown the young woman handing her flute to Titian? According to Dr. Joost-Gaugier all the figures in the painting are original. Scientific analysis of the underpainting reveals that only the standing nude was altered.

I can accept the idea that Titian might have kept this painting in his studio for years but that could mean that he revised and retouched it at a later date using paints mixed years later than 1510. Given this fact, I do not believe the scientific evidence firmly establishes a dual authorship.

I do believe that Titian painted in the style of Giorgione as an act of homage to his recently deceased friend. I would also not be surprised if Titian used Giorgione cartoons. I believe that the young Titian acted more as a colorist than a designer on the walls of the Fondaco de Tedeschi with the result that onlookers mistook his work for Giorgione’s. 

Rather than an Arcadian poesia in an antique style, I believe that Titian used the biblical story of David and Jonathan to express the depth of his sorrow at Giorgione’s passing. Jonathan was the son and heir of King Saul, and David was a young shepherd boy. They became the closest of friends during Israel’s struggle with the Philistines. 

Titian dressed Giorgione in the finery befitting a King’s son while he clothed himself in rustic garb. In my interpretation the shepherd in the mid-ground would then be David’s father left behind with his flocks, and not a typical gamboling Arcadian shepherd. 

Renaissance art historians never tire of trying to find sources in ancient literature for paintings whose subjects mystify them. They go to great lengths to show that painters like Giorgione and Titian were familiar with these texts even though there is little evidence that they could even read Latin. For some reason they find it difficult to imagine that the sources of many of these beautiful paintings are in the Bible and the apocryphal legends that embellished the sparse biblical account. ***

###

* Joost-Gaugier, Christiane L. The mute poetry of the Fete Champetre: Titian’s memorial to Giorgione. Gazette des Beaux Arts, January 1999, Issue 1560, pp. 1-14.  After my initial intuition I  discovered that famed art historian S. J. Freedberg had also seen the painting as a homage to Giorgione, and noted that in my paper.  S.J. Freedberg, Painting in Italy, 1500-1600, London, 1990, pp. 139-140.

** Euterpe was also seen by Ethanan Motzkin in "The Meaning of Titian’s Concert champetre in the Louvre.” Gazette des Beaux Arts, 116 (1990), pp. 51-66.

*** The late Ross J. Kilpatrick, a classicist, argued that instead of Virgil, the source of the Pastoral Concert could be found in Horace and Propertius. "Horatian Landscape in the Louvre's "Concert Champetre," Artibus et Historiae, Vol. 21, No. 41 (2000), pp. 123-131. He included a discussion of Dr. Joost-Gaugier's interpretation. 

Titian: Presentation of the Virgin

  Today I republish my review article on David Rosand's magisterial interpretation of Titian's  Presentation of the Virgin. Despite the depth and comprehensiveness of Rosand's interpretation, I did disagree with him on one point. Back in 2012, I argued that the old woman featured prominently in the foreground was Anna, the prophetess, who appeared in the biblical account of the Presentation of Mary's infant son. I include my opinion at the end of this review.  

David Rosand’s essay, “Titian’s Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple and the Scuola della Carita” appeared in the Art Bulletin in March, 1976. * It would be hard to imagine a more thorough and better researched paper than this one by the late Columbia professor who during his long career became one of the leaders in the field of the Venetian Renaissance.

In his essay Rosand proposed to “take a new look at Titian’s painting, to consider it on its own terms, the details of the composition as well as its broader contexts….” He examined the patronage, the social function of the picture, the position of the image within the history of its type, the relationship of the picture to its physical site, as well as the conditions under which it was to be seen. 

He stressed that he was departing from the traditional nineteenth and early twentieth century view of the painting as an example of Renaissance naturalism with little attention to its iconography. Rosand’s study is primarily iconographical. He demonstrated that practically every detail in the painting is important, and that all the details fit together to form a unified whole. 

In this brief review I would like to highlight some of the most significant iconographic details that Rosand explored as a guide to viewing the painting. I would also like to disagree with his analysis on one significant point.  

Titian’s painting is still in the place in which it was originally meant to be seen although the nature of the site has changed around it. Venice’s Accademia, its famous art museum, was originally the church of S. Maria della Carita, the home of the Confraternity della Carita, one of the leading social and charitable organizations in sixteenth century Venice. 

Around 1534 the confraternity commissioned Titian to do a painting of the Presentation of the Virgin for a particular wall in one of its rooms. The Presentation was a very popular subject in Renaissance Venice both before and after the Reformation. The subject was based on the legendary story of Joachim and Anne, the parents of Mary. Giotto had immortalized the story back in the thirteenth century on the walls of the Scrovegni or Arena chapel in nearby Padua.

According to the legend Joachim was a prosperous sheep raiser whose offering was rejected by the priests of the Temple because he and his wife were childless, a sign of divine disfavor. Banned from the Temple, Joachim left his wife and went to live in the fields with his shepherds and flocks. However, he made an offering in the wilderness and not only was it accepted by God, but he was also told to return home to his wife, Anne, who had also been given a sign that they will be blessed with a child.  

They met at the Golden Gate of the city, exchanged a kiss, and Anne conceived and bore a daughter Mary. In thanksgiving the joyous couple resolved to offer their child to service in the Temple.

The offering of the child is the focal point of Titian’s painting although Titian depicts her ascending the steps seemingly on her own volition in much the same way that she appears to rise on her own in his earlier Assunta. Rosand noted that Titian surrounded the young Mary with “a full mandorla of golden light”, something unprecedented and full of meaning.

the Virgin does indeed rival and outshine the natural light entering through the windows of the room; she is the light beyond the light of nature, a radiance more brilliant than the sun….The wisdom texts, the basis of the Marian celebration, afford then a means of reading Titian’s Presentation, allowing us to determine the significance of many of its supposedly merely picturesque details within the context of a controlling thematic structure. [68]

Instead of mere naturalistic, pictorial details, the sunlight, the clouds, and the mountains in the background all relate to the theme of the painting: “the diffusion of … divine light into the world." 

Rising behind the pyramid is a great cumulus cloud, its luminous shape dominating the left side of the canvas….one ought to expect this form, moving so majestically over the landscape, to assume a meaning beyond its obvious naturalistic function. And I would suggest that this meaning derives from the same wisdom texts with which Titian was so evidently familiar. {Ecclesiasticus 24: 5-7} “as a cloud I covered all the earth: I dwell in the highest places, and my throne is a pillar of cloud.” In this form the divinity presides over Titian’s landscape, becoming with the pyramid a monumental hieroglyph of the divine immanence, while on the opposite side of the picture the Virgin’s radiance speaks of its ultimate incarnation for the salvation of mankind. [70]

In a section entitled “Dramatis Personae”, Rosand identified the various onlookers to the Virgin’s ascent up the steps of the Temple. He rejected the opinion of Vasari and others that these were merely portraits of contemporaries including Titian himself. The main characters relate to the theme of the painting and derive from scriptural sources.

Oddly enough Joachim and Anne, the parents of Mary, while centrally placed, are somewhat obscured. Joachim stands with his back to the viewer with his hand on his wife’s shoulder. Anne wears a little cap and certainly does not stand out as do other women in the painting.

Rosand followed the lead of Leo Steinberg in identifying the young woman dressed in gold and white at the foot of the steps as Mary’s elder cousin, Elizabeth, the future mother of John the Baptist.  

 

The beautiful young woman at the foot of the stairs, so often carelessly identified as Anna, acquires by her prominence within the composition a rather distinctive significance…. care has been taken to distinguish her from the rest of the procession. Dressed in gold and white, stately yet modest, seen in pure profile, she seems to reflect in her larger person the figure of the Virgin herself, and this connection is made explicit by the indication of her companion. [73-4]

Again following Steinberg’s suggestion, Rosand identified the younger priest at the top of the stairs as another major figure in the Infancy narrative, Zacharias, the future husband of Elizabeth. 

At the top of the stairs stands the second priest, receiving special focus by the upturned glance of the young acolyte; he too is in profile, but facing left. These two figures…are isolated as a couple within the composition, formally responding to one another across the distance of the staircase. 

Rosand departed from earlier guesses and argued that the figures at the left of the painting, dressed mainly in black, must be the patrons. “The eight obvious portraits in Titian’s picture must surely represent the chief officers of the Carita…” In particular, the one in red must be the Guardino Grande who for solemn feasts would be dressed in “crimson robes and ducal sleeves.” [74]

The woman at the left holding a baby and stretching out her hand is a mendicant, a personification of Charity, the primary work of the confraternity. “Titian elevates her, or rather the entire action to the status of a personification, or enactment, of Caritas…”

Finally, at the outset of his paper Rosand admitted that the old woman looking on besides the steps has perhaps been the greatest single mystery of the painting. 

The old egg-seller in front of the stairs has inspired more comment than any other single figure in the composition. [56]

 He noted that most interpreters see her as a mere “pictorial detail” but argued that she represented much more. Panofsky had seen her as a personification of Judaism but Rosand was more specific. 

Instead of a representatives of the Jews as such, we have here, then, a personification of Synagogue. And it is to this tradition that Titian’s old egg-seller, as the unreconstructed Synagogue, belongs. [72]

However, his description of the traditional appearance of Synagogue does not fit his explanation.

an old woman dressed in tattered black garments. In her right hand she holds, inverted, the Tablets of the Law; in her left is the broken Roman vexillum, a red banner emblazoned with the gold letters S.P.Q.R [73]

Actually, the figure in black behind the two priests at the top of the stairs fits the description better. 

The egg-seller is old but her clothing indicates an elevated, even exalted status. Her gown is the same blue as the young Virgin’s and her head is covered with a white shawl that Titian had sometimes used in depictions of the Madonna. Rosand had argued that the gold and white of Elizabeth’s garments indicated her status but why ignore the garments of the old woman? Cima da Conegliano in an earlier version of the Presentation, that is often compared with Titian’s, also clothed the egg seller in blue and white. 

I believe that the old woman could very well be Anna the Prophetess, who appeared in the gospel account of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple. Scripture records that she had been a Temple denizen for years and it is not hard to imagine that Venetian artists would have wanted to also depict her attendance at the Presentation of Mary. 

It is true that she does not look at the young Mary ascending the steps. But her back is turned to the Temple and she looks toward or perhaps past the assembled figures who are also illuminated by the divine light that comes from the left. 

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*David Rosand: Titian’s Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple and the Scuola della Carita. The Art Bulletin, Vol. 58. No. 1 (Mar., 1976), pp. 55-84.

Review: Tom Nichols: Giorgione's Ambiguity

Ambiguity is defined as the quality of being open to more than one interpretation. In Giorgione’s Ambiguity, Tom Nichols argues that the mystery surrounding so many of the paintings of the Venetian master that has resulted in almost countless interpretations was by design, and not a failure of viewers, from Giorgione’s time to ours, to understand or find the texts that might unravel the mystery. *

Moreover, Nichols argues that Giorgione’s paintings were uniquely ambiguous, and that he had no predecessors or successors in this respect. Giorgione deliberately departed from traditional Venetian artistic themes and techniques, a practice followed by no one else, including the young Titian whose works Nichols regards as models of clarity despite the Pastoral Concert and the Sacred and Profane Love.

Nichols closely examines almost every work still attributed to Giorgione and sees ambiguity in practically every one of them, whether sacred subjects, portraits, landscapes or nudes. Nevertheless, Nichols often fails to see or even glosses over evidence that might lead him to modify his hypothesis.

In his extended discussion of the Tempest, for example, Nichols pays little attention to the nude woman nursing her infant. He regards her as secondary, ignoring the obvious fact that Giorgione shines a bright spotlight of sunlight on her, despite the storm in the background. He mentions a couple of explanations for why she is nude and nursing but rejects them without offering his own. He does not mention the large cloth draped over her shoulder that is obviously not an article of clothing. He does not mention or identify the plant in front of the woman or why the part beneath her heel has withered and died.

Like any good art historian, Nichols refers to other paintings, some many years before and after Giorgione’s time, but sometimes fails to notice relevant contemporary works. In his discussion of the Boy with an Arrow he finds no ambiguity. “Male physical beauty and its power to generate sexual desire is, after all, the obvious subtext of this painting.”(97) He insists that it cannot be St. Sebastian but does not notice Raphael’s remarkably similar depiction of the saint. It is true that Giorgione characteristically omits the halo but is that deliberate ambiguity, or rather confidence that he could depict the holiness within without the traditional device?

So, the essential question remains. Does Giorgione deliberately infuse ambiguity into his paintings, or is ambiguity a result of viewers failing to see and understand as Giorgione and his patrons might have done? Nichols himself provides a good example. Like many modern art historians, he tends to look for evidence of eroticism and sensuality in both the artist and his paintings. He notices the bare leg of Judith but what if there was a biblical source that would explain the bared thigh? In the Tempest, he sees sensuality in both the nude woman and the man, although he suggests that the man’s lust is unfulfilled, and that the broken columns in the mid-ground are phallic symbols of male impotence. But Luca Signorelli used two broken columns in his depiction of the end of the world in the Orvieto cathedral, and broken columns were commonplace in depictions of the rest on the flight into Egypt.

If we could see through the eyes of contemporary Venetians, perhaps much of the ambiguity would disappear. Significantly, Nichol’s bibliography does not include John Fleming’s 1982 study of the Frick St. Francis, a painting that Nichols believes is a rare example of ambiguity in the work of Giovanni Bellini. Fleming explained every detail in that painting and showed that it derived from a text by St. Bonaventura. Also, in a rare omission, Nichols does not discuss a seventeenth century copy of a lost Giorgione that is usually called the Discovery of Paris.

Giorgione’s Ambiguity is an easy-to-handle and well-bound volume whose text runs to 212 pages. It is very well-illustrated, and the illustrations are conveniently placed near the discussions. More importantly, it is well written with only a few lapses into art jargon. It comes with an extensive bibliography and notes and would serve most students as an up-to-date Giorgione catalog. ###

* Tom Nichols: Giorgione’s Ambiguity, 2020.

Review. Panofsky, Durer in Venice

Albrecht Durer traveled to Venice in the latter half of 1505 and stayed until early in 1507. It seems that he had planned this journey for a while but apparently an outbreak of plague in Nuremburg hastened his departure. Erwin Panofsky devoted a whole chapter to the Venetian sojourn in his magisterial study, The Life and Art of Albrecht Durer. Panofsky entitled the chapter, ‘The Second Trip to Italy and the Culmination of Painting, 1505-1510/11.’

Panofsky points out that Durer had achieved a high degree of fame even before this visit to Venice. In Panofsky’s words,

The young beginner who had visited Venice eleven years before was now a world-renowned master whose inventions were copied and imitated everywhere. Also, he was no longer poor….Thus he did not walk about the city as an unknown and insignificant tourist but plunged into its colorful and stimulating life as a distinguished guest. He became acquainted with ‘intelligent scholars, good lute-players, flutists, connoisseurs of painting and many noble minds’ who honored and befriended him. [107-8]

Despite his mastery in wood-cut and engraving, Durer turned exclusively to oil painting while in Venice. Panofsky indicates that Venice and its painters had a great impact on the German master. From his correspondence we know that Durer regarded the aged Giovanni Bellini as still the greatest of painters, but in a letter dated February 7, 1506, Durer mentioned that he had also found “many painters much superior to Jacopo de’ Barbari,” an artist already well-known to Durer before the Italian trip.

Panofsky indicates that Durer turned to painting to show that he could work with color as well as any Venetian, but also because of the desires of his patrons in Venice. Almost immediately on his arrival Durer was welcomed by the prosperous German merchant community. It would appear that connections in Nuremberg and Augsburg had paved the way for him and even arranged a lucrative commission to paint an altarpiece for S. Bartolommeo, the German church in Venice. In a letter to a friend about the altarpiece, usually called the “Feast of the Rose Garlands,” Durer claimed that the commission was an effective way to “silence those who said I was good as an engraver but did not know how to handle the colors in painting.” [109-110]

On the completion of the Feast of the Rose Gardens Durer bragged, “I herewith announce that there is no better image of the Virgin in the country.” This claim might be exaggerated but the painting did gain much acclaim.

Old Giovanni Bellini…visited his studio and expressed the wish to acquire one of his paintings…When the “Feast of the Rose Garlands” was completed it was admired by the whole Venetian aristocracy, including the Doge and the Patriarch, and finally even by Durer’s colleagues….” [109]

Panofsky agrees with this contemporary evaluation despite the very poor condition of the painting today. “In one propitious moment he succeeded in synthesizing the force and accuracy of his design with the rich glow of Venetian color.” Panofsky acknowledges Durer’s debt to Bellini

The balanced grandeur of this composition would not have been attainable to Durer without the study and complete understanding of the style of Giovanni Bellini whom he so frankly admired… (112)

The painting was inspired by the increasingly popular devotion to the rosary, especially among the Dominican friars, whose founder was considered to have been the creator of the devotion. The rose garlands in the painting actually represent the decades of the rosary, and in Panofsky’s opinion the painting should actually be titled, “the Brotherhood of the Rosary.” 

While working on the altarpiece for S. Bartolommeo, Durer also completed two smaller paintings of sacred subjects. The first was the so-called Madonna of the Siskin, now in the Staatliche Museum in Berlin. The second was a version of Christ Among the Doctors that is now in the  Thyssen Bornemisza collection in Madrid.

The “Madonna of the Siskin” derives its popular name from the bird on the arm of the infant Jesus. However, it is actually a representation of the meeting of the young John the Baptist with the Holy Family on their return from the sojourn in Egypt. Panofsky notes that the young Baptist is the most significant iconographical feature in the painting.

The inclusion of this figure…was an utter novelty in Northern art which…knew only the triad of the Holy Family and the complete circle of the Holy Kinship, but not the “Virgin with the Infant Jesus and the Little St. John.” This theme was Central Italian rather than Venetian, but that compositions not unlike Durer’s…existed in Venice and the “Terra Firma” is demonstrated… [113]

In Panofsky’s opinion, Durer took this traditional subject to a new level. He “surpassed this and similar prototypes by enlivening the entire composition and by endowing the little St. John with a Leonardesque or even Raphaelesque vitality which had been foreign to the earlier Venetian and Venetianizing schools.”... [114]

While the Madonna of the Rose Garlands took months to complete, it would appear that Christ among the Doctors, the final painting in the Venetian triad, was done in a matter of days. Yet, Durer considered this painting as “something new and extraordinary” and Panofsky concurs.

The emphasis on manual gesticulation, and even the specific gesture of arguing by counting fingers is unquestionably Italian, as is also the compositional form as a whole. The idea of presenting a dramatic incident by half-length figures so that the whole effect is concentrated on the expressive quality of hands and faces had been sanctioned by Mantegna…and had gained favor in all the North Italian schools, particularly in Venice and Milan. [114]

Panofsky’s description of this painting reminds me of the so-called Three Ages of Man usually attributed to Giorgione. I have interpreted that painting as a dramatic incident also from the life of Christ: the Encounter of Jesus with the Rich Young Man. Giorgione, who was working in Venice at the same time as Durer, also used the expressive hands and faces of half-length figures to create an effect. In both paintings the half-length treatment provides a kind of close-up or zoom effect. 

Giorgione: "Three Ages of Man"
Pitti Palace

In the year after Durer left Venice, Giorgione was given the commission to fresco the exterior walls of the newly rebuilt Fondaco dei Tedeschi, the center of German community in Venice. Over the years scholars have tried to find some northern influence on Giorgione’s work, but Panofsky never mentions Giorgione. Instead, he argues that Durer was greatly influenced by what he saw in Venice. After his return to Germany, Durer eventually gave up painting and went back to his wood cuts and engravings. But they would never be the same. His stay in Venice had brought his work to an even greater level.

I like to think of him and Giorgione both trying to satisfy the demands of their patrons for sacred subjects while at the same time working to a make their work exceptional and innovative. 

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Note: This essay originally appeared as a post on Giorgione et al... in 2014.

*Erwin Panofsky: The Life and Art of Albrecht Durer, Princeton, 1955. Page citations are in brackets.  

Review: Anna Jameson

I am not ashamed to admit that I have used the writings of Anna Jameson, a now neglected nineteenth century English writer on Renaissance art, in my studies of Giorgione and Titian. First of all, I love the vivacity of her style. Here she is deploring the varied attempts to depict Mary Magdalen.

  

We have Magdalenes who look as if they never could have sinned, and others who look as if they never could have repented; we have Venetian Magdalenes with the air of courtesans, and Florentine Magdalenes with the air of Ariadnes; and Bolognese Magdalenes like sentimental Niobes; and French Magdalenes, moitie galantes, moitie devotes; and Dutch Magdalenes, who wring their hands like repentant washerwomen. The Magdalenes of Rubens remind us of the ‘unfortunate Miss Bailey;’ and the Magdalenes of Vandyck are fine ladies who have turned Methodists.*

This passage also illustrates the depth and breadth of her knowledge. Mrs. Jameson was an Englishwoman whose life resembled that of a character from a Jane Austen novel. Her father was an educated man but of no great means. She made a bad marriage that quickly fell apart, and had to turn to writing to support herself. She had a great interest in the art of the Renaissance and fortunately somehow managed to travel extensively on the Continent.

A reading of her two major works, “Sacred and Legendary Art,” and “Legends of the Madonna,” makes it clear that she saw an extraordinary number of paintings on her travels, and that she managed in an age before digital cameras and laptops to retain an incredible amount of knowledge. From her writings it is clear that she had a keen eye for observation; an encyclopedic knowledge of the legends and stories that formed the basis of most Renaissance art; and a great flair for descriptive writing.  Here is her description of a Giorgione masterpiece that is now known as “The Three Philosophers.”  

“I must mention a picture by Giorgione in the Belvedere Gallery, well known as one of the few undoubted productions of that rare and fascinating painter, and often referred to because of its beauty. Its significance has hitherto escaped all writers on art, as far as I am acquainted with them, and has been dismissed as one of his enigmatical allegories. It is called in German, Die Feldmasser (the Land Surveyors), and sometimes styled in English the Geometricians, or the Philosophers, or the Astrologers. …I have myself no doubt that this beautiful picture represents the “three wise men of the East,” watching on the Chaldean hills the appearance of the miraculous star…” (332)

Her interpretation, which is shared by some prominent art historians today, shows not only her knowledge and appreciation of Giorgione and his work but also her familiarity with the ancient stories and legends so popular during the Renaissance. Even in her time these legends had been largely forgotten.  In her introduction to “Sacred and Legendary Art” she wrote,

It is curious, this general ignorance with regard to the subjects of Medieval Art, more particularly now that it has become a reigning fashion among us. We find no such ignorance with regard to the subjects of classical Art, because the associations connected with them form a part of every liberal education….(8)

In the old times the painters of these legendary scenes and subjects could always reckon on certain associations and certain sympathies in the minds of the spectators. We have outgrown these associations, we repudiate these sympathies. We have taken these works from their consecrated localities, in which they once held their dedicated place, and we have hung them in our drawing-rooms and our dressing-rooms, over our pianos and our sideboards—and now what do they say to us?...can they speak to us of nothing save flowing lines and correct drawing and gorgeous color? (9)

It was only in her work that I was able to find the story of the encounter of the Holy Family with robbers on the flight into Egypt. This story formed the basis for my interpretation of a lost Giorgione that scholars today still persist in calling the “Discovery of Paris.”

Jameson attributed this scholarly blindness to the prejudice engendered by the Reformation. Speaking of the legends of the Medieval church she wrote,

This form of hero-worship has become, since the Reformation, strange to us—as far removed from our sympathies and associations as if it were antecedent to the fall of Babylon and related to the religion of Zoroaster, instead of being left but two or three centuries behind us, and closely connected with the faith of our forefathers and the history of civilization and Christianity. (1)

Our puritanical ancestors chopped off the heads of Madonnas and Saints, and paid vagabonds to smash the storied windows of our cathedrals;--now, are these rejected and outraged shapes of beauty coming back to us, or are we not rather going back to them? (6)

She insisted that the legends were “an intense expression of the inner life of the Middle Ages”…”and that the art of the renaissance could not be properly understood without them.” (2) She bemoaned the prejudice of her own time.

It is about a hundred years since the passion, or the fashion, for collecting works of Art began to be generally diffused among the rich and noble of this land; and it is amusing to look back and to consider the perversions and affectations of the would-be connoisseurship during this period;…any inquiry into the true spirit and significance of works of Art, as connected with the history of Religion and Civilization, would have appeared ridiculous—or perhaps dangerous; we should have had another cry of “No Popery,” and Acts of Parliament forbidding the importation of Saints and Madonnas….(7)

She also criticized the art dealers and collectors of her time, and, I suppose, our time.

The very manner in which the names of the painters were pedantically used instead of the name of the subject is indicative of this factitious feeling; the only question at issue was, whether such a picture was a genuine “Raphael”? such another a genuine “Titian”? The spirit of the work—whether that was genuine; how far it was influenced by the faith and the condition of the age which produced it; whether the conception was properly characteristic, and of what it was characteristic—of the subject? or of the school? or of the time?—whether the treatment corresponded to the idea within our own souls, or was modified by the individuality of the artist, or by the received conventionalisms of all kinds? –these are questions which had not then occurred to any one; and I am not sure that we are much wiser even now; yet,… how can we do common justice to the artist, unless we can bring his work to the test of truth? And how can we do this, unless we know what to look for, what was intended as to incident, expression, character?

Today most scholars are unaware of Mrs. Jameson and her work, or think it is hopelessly outdated. As a result most graduate students have never heard her name. Fortunately, I believe that online versions are now available. 

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*Anna Brownell Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art. V. 1, Boston, 1895, pp. 352-3. Unless otherwise noted all references are to this volume with page numbers in parentheses. 

Review. Emile Male: The Gothic Image

 Emile Male was a pioneering nineteenth century French historian who almost single-handedly rediscovered the magnificent art of the French cathedrals of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. 

                                                

West Rose Window
Chartres

 “in reaching out to the immaterial through the material man may have fleeting visions of God.” Emile Male.

I first read The Gothic Image, the English paperback version of Male’s study of the thirteenth century cathedrals while teaching Western Civilization at a small college in Connecticut over 50 years ago. Even after I left academe to pursue a career in the world of finance, I continued to read Male and eventually went through his complete three volume set, Religious Art in France, re-published by Princeton from 1984 to 1986.*

Male was a pioneer not only because he was one of the first to see the real  subjects of the Gothic windows and sculptures after years of “Enlightenment” obscurantism, but also because  he employed the tools of modern historiography. It almost seems that he actually visited every church and chapel in France as well as a host of others on the European continent. He also found the long forgotten texts that provided the key to the understanding of the windows, paintings, and sculptures that filled the sacred spaces.

It may seem commonplace now but for Male the art of the Middle Ages was primarily didactic. Its purpose was to teach and instruct.  Although it often achieved great beauty, art was not to give visual pleasure. 

 Through the medium of art the highest conceptions of the theologians and scholars penetrated to some extent the minds of even the humblest of people. 

Every branch of human knowledge found its way into the cathedrals which resembled great ships carrying the faithful to their final destination. All that was needed to be known could be found on board. Male identified the six major areas of knowledge depicted in the cathedrals. 

•1. History of the World

•2. Dogmas of Religion

•3. Example of the saints

•4. Hierarchy of virtues (and vices)

•5. Range of the sciences

•6. Arts and crafts

Iconoclastic revolutionaries attacked and destroyed the statues and windows of the cathedrals because they believed that they were representations of the history of the French monarchy. Male showed that they were mistaken because the medieval theologians and artists were more interested in “sacred” history. History could be divided into six major subject areas. 

•1. Old Testament

•2. Gospels

•3. Apocryphal stories

•4. Saints and the Golden Legend

•5. Antiquity—secular history

•6. Close of History—Apocalypse

In dealing with such important subjects the artists followed the dictates of the scholars and theologians. 

the artistic representation of sacred subjects was a science governed by fixed laws which could not be broken at the dictates of individual imagination. 

Even in the Renaissance when great artists like Giorgione and Titian were stretching the envelope, they still were true to traditional iconography. When I was searching for an explanation of the two broken columns in Giorgione's Tempest. I had only to turn to Male’s description of the apocryphal legends surrounding the flight into Egypt. 

Many medieval writers told that when Jesus entered the temple of Sotinen, called Hermopolis by others, he caused the idols to fall, in fulfillment of Isaiah’s words: “Behold the Lord will ascend upon a swift cloud and will enter into Egypt. And the idols of Egypt shall be moved at  his presence”…When the governor of the town, Affodosius, heard of the miracle, he went to the temple; when he saw that all the statues were broken, he worshiped Jesus…. 

The Church adopted the story of the Fall of the Idols, which like many apocryphal legends, grew out of a desire to justify a prophetic text, and it authorized the artists to represent it….The thirteenth century gave an abridged, almost hieroglyphic form to the legend. There are neither town, temple nor priests…two statues falling from their pedestals and breaking in two suffice to recall the miracle. ** 

More than an encyclopedic reference, Male was a true guide for anyone seeking to understand Medieval and Renaissance art. He showed how symbols could be decoded to identify once familiar subjects. The nimbus or halo was a sign of holiness within and was only used to identify Christ, the Madonna, the Apostles, and the saints. Christ is always shown with his unique “cruciform” halo. God the Father, Jesus, and the Apostles are always bare foot, but not the Madonna and the saints. Divine intervention is usually indicated by a hand emerging from above or from clouds. Cherubs indicate the eternal rest of Heaven. 

Well-known Apostles have their identifying characteristics. St. Peter usually is balding with a short stubby beard. St. Paul is bald but with a long straight beard since he belonged to the Jewish sect that did not cut their hair. He is often shown with the sword used in his own execution. St. John, regarded by tradition as the youngest Apostle, is usually beardless.

Even events must follow the rules. At the Last Supper Jesus and the Apostles are ranged opposite Judas who is bereft of halo. At the Crucifixion the Madonna must stand at the right hand of Jesus and St. John at the left. The right hand always indicates the place of honor. At the Annunciation artists could vary the postures and attitudes of the angel and the Virgin, but there must always be a flower between them.

Male explained why the altar must always be oriented toward the East, the direction of the rising sun. Only after the Reformation would the Jesuits discard this ancient practice. The cold, dark North side of the cathedrals would always depict scenes from the Old Testament while the warm and bright South would be used for the New Testament. The West was the direction of the setting sun and therefore used to depict the end of the world and Last Judgment as seen in the great West Rose window of Chartres.

Numerical symbolism was extremely important. The number 3 represented the Trinity and all spiritual things. Four represented all material things, since matter was made up of the four elements of air, earth, fire, and water. Seven was a particularly important number for it represented humanity, the unique sum of spirit and matter. There were the seven ages of man, the seven virtues with their corresponding vices, the seven sacraments, and even the seven planets that played a mysterious role in governing human destiny. The number 12, the product of 3 and 4, represented completeness. It was the number of the Apostles, the tribes of Israel, and of the universal Church.

Rose Window, Assumption Church
Fairfield CT ***

Consider this little Rose window from the back of my own parish church in Connecticut which was modeled on the Norman Gothic style of the twelfth century. The risen Lamb of God from the Book of Revelation reclines on an altar with the Seven Seals. Around this center the twelve petals of the rose each contain a symbol of one of the  Apostles who represent all the elect. This same circular window representing Paradise can be found in all the great French cathedrals, as well as in Dante’s Paradiso.

 For Medieval artists and craftsmen the choice of subject was extremely important. To paraphrase Male, every form clothed a thought, and thought fashioned the matter and assumed plastic form. 

Sadly, most modern scholars seem to have only a token knowledge of his work. I suppose it is regarded as out-dated and old fashioned but, in my opinion, it is impossible to fully understand the art of the Italian Renaissance without poring through his volumes. For Male the Middle Ages ended not with the Renaissance but only in 1517 with the onset of the Protestant Reformation. 

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 * A convenient paperback collection of excerpts and essays can be found in Emile Male, Religious Art from the Twelfth to the Eighteenth Century, Princeton, 1982. 

 **Emile Male: Religious Art in France, The Thirteenth Century, Princeton, 1986, pp. 220-1. 

*** Image by Melissa DeStefano 

Review. Salvatore Settis: Castlefranco Altarpiece

Commentators have always regarded Giorgione’s “Castelfranco Altarpiece” as a unique and original work of art. It is Giorgione’s only known altarpiece, and although he used a traditional subject, he characteristically brought it to a new level. In their 1999 Giorgione catalog Teriseo Pignatti and Filoppo Pedrocco pointed to the extraordinary color scheme compared to other contemporary works.

These are all objective pieces of evidence, but they do not explain the unmistakable uniqueness of Giorgione’s altarpiece, which we feel constitutes the first attempt to convey true atmospheric effects through pure vibrations of color, both in the figures and in the distant landscape. There is a profusion of velvet crimsons in the figures, grass greens and gilded damascenes, the likes of which had never before been seen in Emilia or Venice. This consistent development and reshaping of Bellini’s premises and skilled application of Carpaccio’s fracturing of color is fundamental to Giorgione’s extremely personal work.* (128)

In a 2009 study of Giorgione, written in conjunction with the exhibition in Giorgione’s home town of Castelfranco Veneto that commemorated the 500th anniversary of the painter’s death, Enrico Maria dal Pozzolo wrote:

it would be unjust to diminish the importance of the very personal reworking that this young talent dared to express when he found himself standing before the great blank spaces of the panel,…[His] lifting the Madonna up to the highest possible height…but at the same time using that ‘emblematic” green cloth to tie them together and taking the back out of the chapel so that a preponderant landscape element might be added…is indicative of an approach that was totally original and free of conditioning.** (167)

My wife and I saw the Altarpiece in the spring of 2010. We had attended the annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America that had been held that year in Venice, and decided to take the train to Castelfranco to see if we could get into the Giorgione exhibition. That Sunday was the closing day and the exhibition was sold out but we were able to see the Altarpiece on display in the Cathedral next door.

The first thing I noticed was the relatively small size of this extraordinarily beautiful painting that had been so carefully cleaned and restored in Venice only a few years before. It would certainly be dwarfed by Giovanni Bellini’s famed Venetian altarpiece in the church of S. Zaccaria that was also completed in 1505. The small size of the “Castelfranco Altarpiece” stems from the fact that it was meant not for the high altar in the Cathedral but for a small funerary chapel.

The whole story of the altarpiece is told best by Salvatore Settis in an extremely well researched essay that appeared in the exhibition catalog for the 2004 Giorgione exhibition that had been jointly sponsored by the Accademia in Venice and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. For obvious reasons the Altarpiece was not included in the exhibition, but the essay by Settis was one of the highlights of the catalog.***

Settis related the history of Tuzio Costanzo, a Sicilian adventurer, in the service of the King and Queen of Cyprus toward the end of the 15th century. After the death of the King the threat of succession problems led the Venetian Signory to recall the Queen, the famed Caterina Cornaro, to the Veneto and take the government of the island into its own hands. She established herself in Asolo where her home became a humanist center. Always faithful to Caterina, Tuzio Costanzo became a Venetian condotierre and established his residence in Castelfranco.

In 1504 the death of his son, Matteo, himself serving with Venetian forces in Ravenna, led Tuzio to establish a funerary chapel in the Castelfranco cathedral for Matteo, and eventually for himself. Settis agrees with those who believe that the death of Matteo occasioned Giorgione’s commission.

Not only does the death of Matteo help to establish the dating of the Altarpiece, but it also helps to solve some of the mystery that has surrounded this unusual altarpiece. For example, Settis argued that that the large rectangular box at the bottom with the Costanzo coat of arms was a “Sarcophagus of Porphyry,” a material that had “symbolic connotations that were markedly funerary.” Moreover, such sarcophagi were extremely rare. “In Italy they were found only in Rome and in Sicily, especially in the cathedrals in Monreale…and in Palermo...” (142).

The Sicilian connection also helps to establish the identity of the armored saint. It’s neither St. George nor St. Liberalis, the patron saint of the Cathedral, but St. Nicasius, a popular Sicilian saint holding the banner of the Order of Jerusalem.
“In this case, the only candidate is St. Nicasius, venerated in Palermo and Messina, where his cult is associated with that of St. Francis (exactly as in the Altarpiece).” (p. 144).

The Sicilian heritage and connections of Tuzio Costanzo explain the rare appearance of St. Nicasius so far from home.“The St Nicasius of the Castelfranco Altarpiece is one of those described by Fabio Bisogni as “displaced saints (santi fouri posto)”, common only in one part of Italy and very rare (and therefore very difficult to recognize) in others…” (144).

Above the sarcophagus the very unusual direction of the gazes of both Madonna and Child derives from the nature of the composition.

But the sad gaze of the mourning Madonna from Castelfranco: is not directed at the Son…, and the Son is not looking at the shining armor of the warrior saint. Both mother and child focus on the sarcophagus with the Costanzo coat of arms, and their gazes are the only visual link between the upper and lower parts of the painting; their sad and self-absorbed attitude must be related to a recent death, and the coat of arms on the sarcophagus reveals whose death they mourn, in a reference to the tombstone on the wall close by that bears the name of Matteo Costanzo. (146)

I would just like to add an observation that has been inspired by Settis’ study. Above the sarcophagus there is a white marble altar on which the Madonna’s throne rests. But Franciscan spirituality regarded the Madonna herself as an altar on which her Son, the Eucharist, is placed. For confirmation we need only look at the white cloth underneath the Infant that also covers Mary’s head. It is the corporale that always covers an altar. Giorgione would later use the corporale in his famous “Tempest” where it winds around Mother and Child in much the same way.

But why two altars? On occasion, a funerary chapel is opened for Mass. At the height of the Mass, immediately after the consecration, the priest utters an ancient formula: “Lord, let your angel take this sacrifice to your Altar in Heaven.” At every Mass the sacrifice offered at the earthly altar would be merged with the eternal sacrifice of the Heavenly Altar. In Giorgione’s painting we see the Heavenly Altar (Mary) right on top of the earthly altar.

This concept, that seems so strange to viewers today, is reinforced by Giorgione’s artistic genius. Where is the viewer in this painting? We are not at floor level with the saints. We seem to look down on them. How is it possible for us to see the landscape in the background behind the curtain? The landscape in which we live is in the background. The figures in the foreground are in another world.


*Pignatti, Terisio, and Pedrocco, Filippo: Giorgione, Rizzoli, NY, 1999.

** Enrico Maria dal Pozzolo: Giorgione, Milan, 2009.

***Salvatore Settis: “Giorgione in Sicily–On the Dating and Composition of the Castelfranco Altarpiece.” In Ferino-Pagden, Sylvia, and Nepi-Scire, Giovanna: exh. Cat. Giorgione, Myth and Enigma, Vienna, 2004.