Giorgione and Jan van Scorel

Jan van Scorel: Madonna with Wild Roses, c. 1530, Utrecht, Central Museum.

Despite the title the presence of Joseph and the Ass in the right background indicates a "Rest on the flight into Egypt."








Jan van Scorel, an artist born in the Netherlands around 1495, traveled to Venice to study around 1520, only ten years after the death of Giorgione. Scholars speculate that during his stay he became familiar with the work of Giorgione and Titian. He certainly would have seen the famous frescoes at the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, as well as Titian’s famous Assunta in he Frari.

In 1530 Marcantonio Michiel, a Venetian patrician, saw the painting that would become known as the “Tempest” in the home of Gabriel Vendramin. In his notes Michiel described the painting as the “little landscape on canvas, representing stormy weather and a gipsy woman with a soldier,” and said it was by Giorgio di Castelfranco. Coincidentally, right after the “Tempest” entry, Michiel noted a “picture representing Our Lady with St. Joseph in the desert,” and said it was by John Scorel of Holland. The painting would most likely be a version of the “Rest on the Flight into Egypt.”

One year later, Michiel noted another Scorel in the home of Giovanni Ram at S. Stefano. “The small picture representing the Flight into Egypt, is by John Scorel.” (121). Giovanni Ram’s collection also included two other small pictures representing the flight into Egypt by an unnamed Flemish painter. (122)* (Either one of these "Rests" might have looked like the Scorel on the left.)

[In my paper on the “Tempest” I have argued that it is also a version of the “Rest on the Flight into Egypt.”]

Northern painters of sacred subjects like Patenir, David, and Memling were very popular with Venetian collectors. The lesser-known Jan Scorel would appear to have been just as popular. In 1966 Max Friedlander wrote of the vagaries of Scorel’s fame:**

The opinions of the sixteenth century are unanimous on Jan van Scorel and proclaim his fame loudly and--the reasons for this fame….So unbounded is our admiration for Netherlandish painting that Scorel’s determined and conscious turning away from tradition seems at first sight to be a dangerous uprooting. In quite recent times, it is true, there is a dawning tendency to recognize the positive side of the Rome pilgrim’s achievement…

Scorel’s popularity probably stemmed from the influences that Giorgione and other Italian painters exerted on his work. Scorel illustrates the continued importance of sacred subjects like the “Rest on the Flight into Egypt” in Venice as well as the “naturalistic” treatments of Italian masters. Here is Friedlander’s account of Scorel’s artistic pilgrimage.

In that same year [1520], the year of Raphael’s death, he probably crossed into Italy and stayed for some time at Venice. From there he made a journey to the Holy land, not merely as a pious pilgrim but also as a mentally alert traveler eager to see the places where Christ’s feet had trodden. This painter’s desire to interpret the biblical scene more ‘correctly’ than had been possible for his predecessors by expressing time and place of the action in the costume, landscape, and architecture could not, of course, lead to results that would satisfy our modern historical sense. Nevertheless,…he was able to offer his contemporaries plausible novelty. The town of Jerusalem, painted in the landscape backgrounds of his religious pictures after studies from nature, was viewed with awe and curiosity….

Scorel returned to Venice from the East, visited several other Italian towns and finally reached Rome…Short as his stay in Rome was, it made a decisive and lasting impression on his entire production.

Because of the Italian influence Scorel represents a break from Netherlandish tradition. In a way, his paintings should be regarded as a primary source for students of Giorgione. He was in Venice only ten years after Giorgione’s death. We know that he was a serious and attentive observer. Michiel’s sketchy notes were recorded two decades after Giorgione’s death. The young Vasari only visited Venice in 1541. Scorel left no written records but his paintings should provide students with visual clues to both the subject matter and manner of Giorgione. Max Friedlander noted that even though Scorel studied in Rome after his sojourn in Venice, the Venetian experience stayed with him.

As a result of his Dutch temperament when he tried to be a Roman he became a Venetian.

This finely dressed Mary Magdalene certainly looks Venetian.


*The Anonimo: Notes on Pictures and Works of Art in Italy, London, 1903.


**Max Friedlander, From Van Eyck to Bruegel, London, 1966, pp. 126-132.

Giorgione and Raphael

Raphael: "The Holy Family under a Palm Tree."*

In the first decade of the 16th century the work of Raphael indicates a strong interest in episodes on the Flight into Egypt. During his Florentine period (1504-1508) Raphael did at least two versions of the "Rest on the Flight into Egypt."

One is a tondo, the “Holy Family under a Palm Tree,” dated c. 1506/7 and currently on loan since 1945 to Scotland’s National Gallery. This painting reflects the naturalism that Italian artists liked to bring to the subject, but also an increased importance for St. Joseph.The prominent palm tree in the background is the only reference that Raphael gives to the popular apocryphal legends surrounding the flight. According to the legend the palm or date tree bent down at the command of the Child so that Joseph could pick its fruit and feed his wife.

In the foreground Joseph is not depicted as a little old man off to the side in search of food. He has been given a prominent position front and center. He holds his simple pilgrim’s staff but is dressed in royal purple and gold. He is no longer a doddering old man and seems capable of protecting the Madonna and Child. Surely, his prominence reflects the growing importance of Joseph in the first decade of the century for Raphael’s patron as well as for most believers.

Raphael: "The Holy Family with the Young St. Joseph," Hermitage.




Another Raphael “Rest” is the “Holy Family with the Young St. Joseph” in the Hermitage and dated around 1506. The three figures are in an enclosure that looks out on a landscape. Again Joseph is not depicted as a decrepit old man but as a beardless middle-ager.

These two versions of the “Rest on the Flight into Egypt” are only a hint of the interest of Raphael and his patrons in the sojourn of the Holy Family in Egypt. Many of the great Madonnas that Raphael painted during his Florentine period are depictions of the meeting of the Holy Family with the young John the Baptist on their return from Egypt.

In Legends of the Madonna Mrs. Anna Jameson gave the background for this legendary meeting.**

Thus, it is related that among the children whom Herod was bent on destroying, was St. John the Baptist; but his mother Elizabeth fled with him to a desert place, and being pursued by the murderers, “the rock opened by a miracle, and closed upon Elizabeth and her child;” which means, as we may presume, that they took refuge in a cavern, and were concealed within it until the danger was over. (356)

Mrs. Jameson added that this meeting has led to some confusion in the minds of artists as well as viewers.

It is nowhere recorded, either in Scripture or in the legendary stories, that Mary and Joseph, in their flight were accompanied by Elizabeth and the little St. John; therefore, where either of these are introduced, the subject is not properly a Riposo, whatever the intention of the painter may have been…366.

Many of Raphael’s most famous Madonnas are versions of this meeting despite their popular appellations.

Painted in 1505 the “Terranuova Madonna” (Berlin, Staatliche Museum, Gemaldegalerie) shows the Infant Christ perusing the scroll presented by the Baptist. The writing clearly refers to the Lamb of God. Inexplicably, another infant looks on. In the left background is a city that represents Judea, and in the right background are the rocks that formed the hiding place of the Baptist.









In 1506 the famous “Belvedere Madonna” (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum) shows the Christ Child accepting the sacrificial cross from the kneeling Baptist. Again they are in a landscape with a city in the background.












In the “La Belle Jardiniere” of 1507 (Paris, Louvre) the Christ Child looks up at his mother as John announces the mission. In a study Raphael has Christ looking directly at John.

















Dated about 1507 the “Canigiani Holy Family” (Munich, Alte Pinakothek) is a much more elaborate version of the “Encounter with the Baptist.” With obvious reference to depictions of this scene by Leonardo and Michelangelo, Raphael adds Elizabeth and a prominent Joseph with his staff and golden robe.






Also in 1507 “The Holy Family with a Lamb” (Madrid, Prado) substitutes a lamb for the Baptist. Again in gold Joseph leans on his staff and observes the child riding the lamb.
















Finally, around the end of the Florentine period Raphael painted the “Esterhazy Madonna” (Budapest, Museum of Fine Arts). The Infant Christ points to the scroll.












What explains the popularity of the “Encounter with the Baptist on the Return from Egypt” in the first decade of the 16th century? It was common to transpose the events of Christ’s maturity to his infancy. The meeting with John the Baptist at the river Jordan is reflected in this earlier meeting on the return from Egypt. John's words, "Behold the Lamb of God," marked the beginning of the salvific mission of Jesus.

Raphael’s interest in these desert scenes reflected the devotion of wealthy patrons as well as humble worshippers. Who can doubt that Giorgione and his patrons did not share the same interest? In the Tempest Giorgione went far beyond the standard image of the “Rest on the Flight” but all the iconographical elements are there.

Vasari described Giorgione as a painter of Madonnas and portraits. The same description could apply to Raphael in the first decade of the 16th century. At the height of what later would be called the High Renaissance both young masters were responding to the great demand for sacred subjects like the "Rest on the Flight into Egypt."

David Orme has developed a very fine site that brings together a great deal of information on the "Flight into Egypt" and its many legends.

*The source for the attributions and dating of the Raphael paintings in this post is Jean-Pierre Cuzin, "Raphael, His Life and Works," 1985.

**Mrs. Anna Jameson:" Legends of the Madonna," Boston, 1885.

Giorgione and Titian

Titian: "The Rest on the Flight into Egypt," Longleat, Marquesse of Bath collection, oil on wood, 46.3 x 61.5 cm, c. 1510.




This version of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt received much notoriety a few years ago when it was stolen from the home of the Marquess of Bath in Wilshire. It was recovered in 2002 after a seven year search. At that time the painting was valued at 5 million pounds.

Lately I have been posting about various versions of the “Rest” by both Flemish and Italian artists to support my interpretation of Giorgione’s “Tempest” as a “Rest on the Flight into Egypt.” Perhaps no version comes closer in time and location than this one usually given to the young Titian.

However, in “Giorgione, Catalog Raisonne” (Petersberg, 2007) Wolfgang Eller attributed the painting to Giorgione. I find it difficult to agree with and sometimes even follow Eller’s overly complex interpretations, but no one looks at a painting better than him or explores painterly technique better in matters of attribution.

In catalog entry # 27 Eller wrote,

“Due to its high quality, especially of the figures and a number of stylistic characteristics and also when compared to other secured works by Giorgione, this painting is attributable to him.”

Eller argued that the “composition of the picture, the execution, and the expression of the figures” pointed to Giorgione. The treatment of the landscape also pointed to Giorgione.

“Titian’s landscapes look like a striped background decoration added on to the scenario…The feeling of space and the merging of the figures into the landscape as experienced in Giorgione’s works is missing with Titian.”

Eller also argued that a comparison with other Giorgione works supports his view. For example, the seated position and the expression of the Madonna can be seen in other Giorgione women including the one in the “Tempest.” “A Madonna of such figural and facial style and detail does not appear in Titian’s early works.”

The figures of St. Joseph and the infant also appear closer to Giorgione’s work. Even the trees bear witness to Giorgione. “The tree looks like the trees Giorgione painted in the “Tempesta”, the “Sunset/Tramonto”, and in the Allendale “Adoration of the Shepherds”…

Finally, Eller concluded by expressing his surprise that the painting is still given to Titian. “In the exhibition in Venice in 1990, the painting was hung in such a manner that the differences to Titian’s painterly technique were easy to recognize.”

I must confess that questions of attribution are somewhat beyond me. I am usually content to defer to the experts. If this painting is by Giorgione, it certainly establishes his familiarity with the Rest on the Flight into Egypt. Even if it is by the young Titian, it demonstrates the popularity of the subject in Venice during the years when both he and Giorgione were establishing themselves as Venetian masters.

Actually, Vasari indicated that Titian painted more than one version of the Rest. Here are two excerpts from his life of Titian.

At the time he first began to paint like Giorgione, when he was no more than eighteen, Titian did the portrait of a friend of his, a gentleman of the Barberigo family…Meanwhile, after Giorgione himself had executed the principal façade of the Fondaco de’ Tedeschi, through Barbarigo Titian was commissioned to paint some scenes for the same building, above the Merceria. After this he painted a large picture with life-size figures which is now in the hall of Andrea Loredano, who lives near San Marcuola. This picture shows Our Lady on the journey to Egypt in the middle of a great forest, and it contains several landscapes. These were beautifully executed because Titian had studied this kind of painting for many months, when he gave hospitality for that purpose to some German painters who specialized in depicting verdant scenes and landscapes. In the woods he painted a number of animals, drawn form life, which are truly convincing and realistic. Pp. 444-5.

In the house of the lawyer Francesco Sonica, a crony of Titian’s, there is a portrait by Titian of Francesco himself, along with a large picture of Our Lady on the journey into Egypt. The Blessed Virgin has dismounted from the ass and is seated on a rock by the wayside; near at hand is St. Joseph and the little St. John, who is offering the Infant Christ some flowers gathered by an angel from the branches of a tree, which is in a wood full of animals; and in the distance the ass is grazing. All this forms a most graceful picture, which has been placed by the gentleman I mentioned in the palace he has built near Santa Justina in Padua. P. 460.

Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists, Volume I, a selection. Translated by George Bull, Penguin Books, London, 1987.

Giorgione and Fra Bartolomeo

Fra Bartolomeo, "Rest on the Flight into Egypt," 1499, Borghese Gallery.

Baccio della Porta, a noted Florentine artist, had been so moved by the death of Savonarola that he gave up his painting career and entered the Dominican order himself. He was given the name Fra Bartolomeo. In 1504 his superiors convinced him to take up his brushes again and become a kind of official Dominican artist in residence.

A little while later the young Raphael began his sojourn in Florence and the two unlikely personalities became friends and associates. It is generally believed that Raphael helped Fra Bartolomeo in developing his craft, but if we look at the latter’s 1499 version of the "Rest on the Flight into Egypt" now in the Borghese Gallery, we can see that Raphael could just as well have learned from the friar.

In 1508 Fra Bartolomeo was sent to Venice to do some work for the Dominican house on the isle of Murano. It would have been hard for him not to have become acquainted with the work of Giorgione, another young genius. Besides his great reputation Giorgione had just completed his spectacular frescoes on the façade of the newly rebuilt Fondaco dei Tedeschi.
At the annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America in Venice in 2010, Alessio Assonitis presented a paper entitled “Fra Bartolomeo and San Pietro Martire at Murano.” He noted the following:

"As a friar-painter…Fra Bartolomeo was exempt from conventional pastoral duties.… His travels to the other two major centers of Italian painting were nothing but artistic sabbaticals which consented the friar to keep up-to-date with recent artistic developments....

Indeed, following his brief sojourn in Venice, Fra Bartolomeo was able to integrate elements of Bellini and Giorgione’s pictorial lexicon soberly and harmoniously….he also showed no reservations about borrowing compositional elements from Venetian artists like Carpaccio, Bellini, Giorgione and Titian."

If we look again at Fra Bartolomeo’s version of the “Rest” in the Borghese Gallery and compare it with another version done after the visit to Venice we will see a striking change.

The Borghese painting was done around 1499 and while it is often called an “Adoration” or a “Holy Family,” it is really a depiction of the “Rest on the Flight into Egypt.” There are the three figures in a landscape so characteristic of “Rest” images, as well as the monumental ruins representative of the fall of the Egyptian idols as the Infant Christ entered Egypt. Artists sometimes just used rocks and rubble to depict the destruction of the idols, but Fra Bartolomeo liked to emphasize the ruins.

I would like to draw attention, however, to the figure of Joseph whose prominent position in the foreground represents his increased importance in Renaissance devotion. He is no longer a small figure off to the side or in the background. He is still portrayed as a very old man with a gray beard.



Ten years later, after the trip to Venice, Fra Bartolomeo did another version of the Rest that is now at the Getty in Los Angeles. This painting depicts the encounter of the Holy Family with the young John the Baptist on the return from Egypt. Now there are four figures in the landscape but Fra Bartolomeo still features the ruins. However, Joseph now appears to be much younger. The beard is gone and he is middle-aged. He is certainly physically capable of protecting his Family.








In my paper on Giorgione’s Tempest” I interpreted his most famous painting as “The Rest on the Flight into Egypt.” I argued that the young man in the painting is St. Joseph.





In the paper I also discussed an earlier Giorgione painting which has been mistakenly called “The Discovery of Paris.” This lost Giorgione only exists in 17th century copies but it is taken almost literally from an apocryphal account of the encounter of the Holy Family with robbers on the Flight into Egypt. In that early work Giorgione depicted Joseph as a very old graybeard. In the “Tempest,” done at the end of his short career, Giorgione chose to portray Joseph as a youthful, virile Venetian patrician.

What was going on in Venice at the beginning of the 16th century? Had artists finally caught up with the demands of religious reformers like Jean Gerson? In a study of Gerson, Brian Patrick McGuire noted that in the early 15th century the famed Chancellor of the University of Paris had called for a different artistic approach to Joseph.

"The chancellor imagined Joseph as a young man, full of energy and potency, able to take care of his wife and son by hard work, and not the broken-down, tired figure of popular imagination…."

"Gerson wanted a man who was virile and chaste, loving and affectionate, happy and fulfilled in his vocation….Such themes are expressed in greatest detail in Gerson’s Considerations on Saint Joseph, written between August and late September 1413. The text takes up more than thirty pages in the Glorieux edition and provides the basis for his later poem, the Josephina."
Brian Patrick McGuire, “Jean Gerson and the Last Medieval Reformation,” Penn State, 2005. Pp. 236-7.

Girolamo Savonarola, another reformer interested in naturalistic depictions of sacred art, might have also played a role in this new approach to Joseph. In the paper mentioned above Alessio Assonitis referred to the work of scholars on Savonarolan influence in Venice.

"Tafuri and Scapecchi have pointed out how certain religious circles in Venice had favorably accepted the Frate’s reformational program; Leathers Kuntz went so far to claim that Savonarola’s sermons had reinvigorated the reformational zeal of the Venetian nobility and popolani….Precisely due to the Serenissima’s relative tolerance, many of Savonarola’s works were published in Venice. Quite frequent were communications between Savonarolans and Venetian presses…."

Whatever the reason, both Giorgione and Fra Bartolomeo changed their approach to St. Joseph in the first decade of the 16th century. In the next decade Paris Bordone and Lorenzo Lotto would also paint a young, virile Joseph in depictions of the Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine.

Francis P. DeStefano
4/30/2011

Giorgione and Patenier

Joachim Patenier: Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Prado)

The popularity of the “Rest on the Flight into Egypt” became an important factor in the development of landscape in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. To incorporate the very popular apocryphal infancy legends into their work artists, especially in the Netherlands, had to deepen and broaden their landscape background.

Depictions of the Rest by these “northern” artists found their way into the palaces of Venetian patricians. Marcantonio Michiel even noted a depiction of “Our Lady with St. Joseph in the desert,” by John Scorel of Holland in the home of Gabriele Vendramin, the owner of Giorgione's Tempest.

Joachim Patinier painted many versions of the Rest. One of the best is in the Prado. The Madonna, dressed in blue and white, sits on a rocky outcrop nursing her Child. St. Joseph is off to the left gathering food for her to eat although his pilgrim's staff and sack are featured in the foreground. Behind the Madonna is what appears to be rocky rubble but the large stone ball indicates the remains of the Egyptian idols that collapsed on the arrival of the Child into Egypt. According to Emile Male the legendary “Fall of Idols” was a commonplace in depictions of the flight into Egypt.

Northern artists like Patinier usually included episodes from the very popular apocryphal gospels in their paintings. In addition to the “Fall of Idols” Patinier depicted the legend of the “wheat or corn field” in the background.

Here is a version of the legend told by Anna Jameson in her own inimitable way.

“In many representations of the Flight into Egypt, we find in the background men sowing or cutting corn. This is an allusion to the following legend:--

When it was discovered that the Holy Family had fled from Bethlehem, Herod sent his officers in pursuit of them. And it happened that when the Holy Family had traveled some distance, they came to a field where a man was sowing wheat. And the Virgin said to the husbandman, “If any shall ask you whether we have passed this way, ye shall answer, ‘Such persons passed this way when I was sowing this corn.” For the Holy Virgin was too wise and too good to save her Son by instructing the man to tell a falsehood. But behold, a miracle! For by the power of the Infant Saviour, in the space of a single night, the seed sprung up into stalk, blade, and ear, fit for the sickle. And next morning the officers of Herod came up, and inquired of the husbandman, saying, “Have you seen an old man with a woman and a Child traveling this way?” And the man, who was reaping his wheat, in great wonder and admiration, replied “Yes.” And they asked him again, “How long is it since?” And he answered, “When I was sowing this wheat.” Then the officers of Herod turned back, and left off pursuing the Holy Family….”

Mrs. Jameson added a little aside that could serve as a reminder for scholars even today.

“By those unacquainted with the old legend, the introduction of the cornfield and reapers is supposed to be merely a decorative landscape, without any peculiar significance.”

[Anna Brownell Jameson, “Legends of the Madonna, as Represented in the Fine Arts,” Boston and New York, 1885. Pp. 359-360.]

In his seminal study of Netherlandish art Max Friedlander argued that the need to include these legendary stories had an important role in the development of landscape.

“The lovers and buyers of Patenier’s pictures were not satisfied with the effect as a whole, they wanted to read in the picture, they sought in it the leisure of a walk full of varied interest or a journey of discovery. If at every turn in the road they came upon adventure, discovered figures to interpret, relationships to trace, all the more satisfied did they feel….”

In a 1975 unpublished doctoral dissertation Sheila Schwarz also pointed out that these stories created a new justification for landscape. Patenier had to expand and deepen the landscape in order to accommodate these little stories. “Then Patenir studded his landscapes with vignettes whose presence further authorizes the expansion of the setting.” [Sheila Schwartz, The Iconography of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt, New York University, Ph. D., 1975, p. 124.]

In the left background of Patenier’s painting we see the city representing Judea from where the Holy Family has fled. Notice the bridge leading out of the city. Then moving to the right we see the newly grown cornfield and the farmer encountered on the journey. In the foreground Madonna and Child have found safety and rest.

Despite obvious differences, it is not hard to notice the similarity between Patenier’s version of the Rest and Giorgione’s Tempest. In both paintings a woman nurses her child while their protector is off to the left. Patenier used rocks and rubble to depict the Fall of Idols while Giorgione used broken columns and ruins. In both paintings there is a city and a bridge in the background. Dark clouds cover Patinier's city just as in the Tempest. Notice how Patenier causes the sky to lighten and grow blue in the center and right background.

Finally, I have argued in my paper on the Tempest that Giorgione used nudity to depict the Immaculate Conception of the Madonna. Patenier dressed his nursing Madonna not in her traditional red and blue but in blue and white, colors which would later become the standard in depictions of the Immaculate Conception. In addition, Patenier illuminated the Madonna as if to suggest the woman "clothed with the sun" from the Book of Revelation.

Below find comments from Max Friedlander on Patenier and the Prado Rest.

Patenier was a landscape painter, perhaps the first Netherlander to regard himself, and to be regarded, as a landscape painter, like Albrecht Altdorfer in Germany. Therein lies his fame. Durer, who was on friendly terms with him, calls him the ‘gut Landschaftsmaler’ (the good landscape painter). How highly the specialist was valued is made abundantly clear by the fact that two of his greatest contemporaries, Quentin Massys and Joos van Cleve, collaborated with him: they painted the figures and he added the landscape….

The Rest on the Flight into Egypt in the Prado is a mature masterpiece. From the plants in the foreground, studied with loving insight and botanical accuracy, to the dusky masses of foliage in the middle ground, from the fancifully constructed Romanesque temple buildings to the blue distance, everything is scrupulously worked out, abundant and rich. The principal figure, the Madonna in a light cloak, firmly outlined but with a softly flowing line, seems a little out of keeping with the whole.

A powerful mood is emitted from this panel; though descriptive and didactic, it seems imbued with poetry.

Max Friedlander, From Van Eyck to Bruegel, London, 1956, pp. 79-81.

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.

###

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.