Giorgione'sTempest: The Young Man

 

In my interpretation of Giorgione’s Tempest as “The Rest on the Flight into Egypt” I identified the young man situated so prominently in the left foreground as St. Joseph. In Giorgione's famous painting the young man stands at the left side of the painting holding a staff. The staff alone should be enough to recognize Joseph but in my interpretation I also discussed his pose and placement in the painting. I acknowledged that the youth and obvious virility of the man was a difficulty, but subsequent investigation has only confirmed my initial intuition. *

In recent years scholars have documented the tremendous increase in devotion to St. Joseph that took place in the fifteenth century, a development that continued right through the Reformation. The increasing devotion, that included the establishment of the Saint’s feast day by Pope Sixtus IV in 1479, naturally made St. Joseph an  important figure in the art of the Renaissance.

In this artistic development the image of St. Joseph began to change to accommodate the thought of theologians like Jean Gerson, the sermons of preachers like Bernardino of Siena, and the demands of patrons and devotees. A new Joseph began to appear. Instead of as a sleepy old man, he began to be depicted as younger and virile: strong enough to protect the Madonna and Child especially on their arduous and potentially dangerous flight into Egypt.

Here I would like to present some other images of Joseph by contemporaries of Giorgione that I discovered in my search for a young Joseph. None are as a young as Giorgione’s man but still they appear strong and vigorous enough to protect the Madonna and Child. 

Raphael's "Sposalizio" is perhaps the most striking example. Raphael's version of the marriage of the Virgin became immediately popular after its completion in 1504. The differences between Raphael's version and the one by his old mentor Perugino have long been noted, but it is obvious that Raphael took pains to make his Joseph younger and more vigorous than Perugino's. Raphael's version is on the left and Perugino's on the right. Click on image to enlarge.

Below is a Raphael version of the "Rest on the Flight into Egypt". This Joseph sports grey hair and beard but he is certainly no more than middle-aged and looks vigorous enough. Moreover, he is dressed in royal purple and gold and has been brought into the center of the picture. He carries the legendary staff or rod that always identifies St. Joseph.

After painting the Sposalizio, Raphael moved to Florence in 1504 where he became associated with Fra Bartolommeo, a painter who had become a Dominican friar after the death of Savonarola. Both painters must have influenced each other. In a version of the encounter of the Holy Family with the young John the Baptist on the return from Egypt  Fra Bartolommeo depicted a young, beardless Joseph.

Fra Bartolommeo: Encounter with the Baptist

Fra Bartolommeo did travel to Venice in 1508 to work in the Dominican house on Murano but I don't think it is necessary to posit a direct influence on Giorgione. The idea of a younger, virile Joseph was in the air, especially since his protection of the Madonna had long been seen as implying protection of the Church. After Giorgione's death in 1510 contemporary Venetian painters continued to portray a young, virile Joseph. Paris Bordone, for example, provided striking examples in versions of the Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine, an event that was usually placed in the desert of Egypt.

One of Bordone's versions is in a private collection but was featured prominently in the 2006 Bellini, Giorgione, Titian exhibition jointly sponsored by Washington's National Gallery and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. In the exhibition catalog we can see a well-built Joseph in the center with his bare muscular leg prominently displayed. I have argued elsewhere that this scene represents a "proxy"marriage where Joseph stands in for the infant Jesus who is obviously too young to marry.

Bordone used the same device in a depiction of the "Mystic Marriage" now in St. Petersburg. Once again, a young, virile Joseph displays his powerful leg. He is not an old man.

Paris Bordone: Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine

No one did more to document the increasing devotion to Joseph and its resulting influence on pre-Reformation art than the late American scholar, Carolyn Wilson. In a paper presented as the 1998 annual Joseph lecture at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia, her description of Joseph in a 1566 version of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt by Santi di Tito could well be used to describe Giorgione's man in the Tempest.

Artists in our period sought in innumerable ways to convey Joseph’s protectorship of Mary, and, of course, her Child. These efforts are apparent not only when we observe expressions of Joseph’s strenuous exertions in scenes of the Flight into Egypt or of his tender solicitude in examples of the rest on the Flight but also when we note the inclusion in Nativity scenes of the accoutrements that signal his preparedness for the imminent escape from Bethlehem and from Herod. The latter include, for example, in Santi’s altarpiece the walking staff that the virile figure grips…
Looking still at this picture, we observe, too, that the placement of Joseph at the lower left foreground puts him near the devout spectator of the work…as his or her mediator. St. Joseph is also in position to stand guard, as he does with confidence and elegance, over the Virgin and Infant…**

The Man in Giorgione's "Tempest"  exhibits the same confidence and elegance.

In the next post I will discuss other images that have heretofore gone unrecognized as St. Joseph.

###

* This post originally appeared on Giorgione et al... on 12/15/2012. 

** Wilson, Carolyn: “St. Joseph as Mary’s Champion: Examining the Distinctive Connection between the ‘Madonna del Giglio’ the ‘Compagnia di San Giuseppe,’ and the Church of San Giuseppe in Florence,”  1998 St. Joseph lecture given at St. Joseph’s University, printed in Joseph of Nazareth, ed. By Joseph F. Chorpenning, O.S.F.S., Philadelphia, 2011. p. 90. In that same volume see the fine essay on Jean Gerson's influence by Brian Patrick McGuire : “Becoming a Father and a Husband: St. Joseph in Bernard of Clairvaux and Jean Gerson.”  

Renaissance Journey: Giorgione,Titian, and Michelangelo

My wife and I just returned from a two week visit to Italy to see some of the paintings that I have written about over the past few years. It was a very meaningful trip for us since it will probably be the last time we ever travel out of the USA. The high point was our visit to the Accademia in Venice where we were surprised to find that Giorgione's Tempest had been given pride of place in a great hall that also featured a small Bosch exhibition.

Giorgione: Tempest on Display

Below is an abstract of my paper on the Tempest delivered in April, 2010 at the annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, held that year in Venice. The full paper can be found at academia.edu.

Giorgione: The Tempest

Abstract: This paper identifies the subject of Giorgione’s "Tempest" as "The Rest on the Flight into Egypt." This interpretation is the only one that identifies all the major elements in the painting. The nude woman nursing an infant is the Madonna. The man standing at the left functioning as an “interlocutor” is St. Joseph with his staff. The broken columns featured so prominently are commonplace in depictions of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt. The city in the background is Judea from where the Holy Family has fled but could also be equated with Padua during the Cambrai war. The scraggly plant in the foreground is identified as a “belladonna” a plant associated with witchcraft and the Devil. No other interpretation of this painting has even attempted to identify the plant.

The great difficulties of this interpretation, the “nude Madonna” and the “young” Joseph, are dealt with in the paper. The nude Madonna is Giorgione’s idiosyncratic way of depicting the concept of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, a doctrine of great importance at the time, especially in Venice. If the association with the War of Cambrai is correct, this interpretation dates the painting in 1509, a year before Giorgione’s death.

The paper also does discuss the relevance to the “Tempest” of a heretofore misidentified copy by David Teniers of a “lost” Giorgione. This painting is usually identified as “The “Discovery of Paris,” but it is actually Giorgione’s depiction of an apocryphal episode on the Flight of the Holy Family into Egypt which I call "The Encounter with the Robbers on the Flight into Egypt." ###

David Teniers; Copy of a lost Giorgione

The first stop on our Italian journey was Rome primarily to visit the Borghese Gallery and see once again its most famous possession, Titian's Sacred and Profane Love. I have interpreted the subject of that painting as "The Conversion of Mary Magdalen." Below is an abstract of a paper that was presented at the annual meeting of the South Central Renaissance Conference in New Orleans in 2012. The full paper can be found at academia.edu.

Titian: Sacred and Profane Love

Abstract:

This paper identifies the subject of Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love as the Conversion of Mary Magdalen. This interpretation identifies all the major elements in Titian’s famous painting. The finely dressed Woman is Mary Magdalen as a Venetian courtesan contemplating a life changing decision. The nude Woman is the converted Magdalen in the process of throwing off her worldly finery as a prelude to a life of fasting and mortification. In her hand she holds the jar of ointment that is found in practically every depiction of the great sinner/saint.

Seeing Mary Magdalen in the painting opens the way for the interpretation of the other iconographical elements in the painting. Wild roses, red garments, and flowing red hair are commonly associated with Mary Magdalen. Even the landscape can be related to her story.

The sarcophagus like fountain that connects the two women is a symbol of the new life of the convert through Baptism. An angel, not Cupid, stirs the waters. The antique relief, which so far has eluded explanation, can now be seen to depict three great sinners. Adam and Eve stand around the tree to the right. Toward the center Cain murders his brother, Abel. At the left, St. Paul falls from his horse on the road to Damascus.

Next to the Madonna, Mary Magdalen was the most popular female saint of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Titian became the most prolific painter of the Magdalen during his long career. He even admitted that he viewed her as an intercessor. The patron of the Sacred and Profane Love, like most Venetians, was of the same mind. ###

After Rome we traveled to Florence to visit the Pitti Palace and the Uffizi for the last time. At the Pitti we wanted to see a painting by Giorgione that is usually called the Three Ages of Man.  I have interpreted its subject as "The Encounter of Jesus with the Rich Young Man." The paper can also be found at MyGiorgione. Many paintings in the Pitti Palace are difficult to see because of their placement and lighting, but the Giorgione is placed very nicely between a doorway and a window. On the other side of the doorway is Raphael's La Donna Veleta, a nice juxtaposition since the careers of both of these young artists were cut short by early deaths.

Giorgione: Three Ages of Man

At the Uffizi we especially wanted to see, along with everyone else in the crowd on Saturday morning, Michelangelo's Doni Tondo. Just last year I posted on this site a series of essays on that famous painting and ultimately posted a full paper at MyGiorgione. I argued that Mary is actually elevating her Child in the same way that a priest elevates the Host at the Consecration of the Mass. The multitude of tourists straining to see the painting seemed like so many worshippers.

After Florence it was on to Venice to see the Tempest, and then to Milan to see the beautifully renovated Brera. Raphael's Sposalizio, his depiction of the engagement of Mary and Joseph, is beautifully displayed. In that painting Raphael portrayed Joseph as a virile young man just as Giorgione's did five years later in the Tempest. Neither of these young artists chose to portray Joseph as a vecchio.

Raphael: Sposalizio detail

Of course, our Italian journey included much more but that can wait for subsequent posts.

###

Note: Dr. Francis P. DeStefano holds a PhD in History from Fordham University but he is not associated with any educational institution. Although early in his career he taught History at a university in Fairfield, CT, he left teaching to build a financial planning practice. He retired in 2008 and now devotes himself to writing and lecturing on History, especially Art History.

Dr. DeStefano currently resides in Fairfield, Ct. His email address is drdestefano@mac.com.

Giorgione's Tempest: The Young Man

In my interpretation of Giorgione’s "Tempest" as “The Rest on the Flight into Egypt” I identified the young man situated so prominently in the left foreground as St. Joseph. In Giorgione's famous painting the young man stands at the left side of the painting holding a staff. The staff alone should be enough to recognize Joseph but in my interpretation I also discussed his pose and placement in the painting. I acknowledged that the youth and obvious virility of the man was a difficulty, but subsequent investigation has only confirmed my initial intuition.

In recent years scholars have documented the tremendous increase in devotion to St. Joseph that took place in the fifteenth century, a development that continued right through the Reformation. The increasing devotion, that included the establishment of the Saint’s feast day by Pope Sixtus IV in 1479, naturally made St. Joseph an  important figure in the art of the Renaissance.

In this artistic development the image of St. Joseph began to change to accommodate the thought of theologians like Jean Gerson, the sermons of preachers like Bernardino of Siena, and the demands of patrons and devotees. A new Joseph began to appear. Instead of as a sleepy old man, he began to be depicted as younger and virile: strong enough to protect the Madonna and Child especially on their arduous and potentially dangerous flight into Egypt.

Here I would like to present some other images of Joseph by contemporaries of Giorgione that I discovered in my search for a young Joseph. None are as a young as Giorgione’s man but still they appear strong and vigorous enough to protect the Madonna and Child. 

Raphael's "Sposalizio" is perhaps the most striking example. Raphael's version of the marriage of the Virgin became immediately popular after its completion in 1504. The differences between Raphael's version and the one by his old mentor Perugino have long been noted, but it is obvious that Raphael took pains to make his Joseph younger and more vigorous than Perugino's. Raphael's version is on the left and Perugino's on the right. Click on image to enlarge.

Below is a Raphael version of the "Rest on the Flight into Egypt". This Joseph sports grey hair and beard but he is certainly no more than middle-aged and looks vigorous enough. Moreover, he is dressed in royal purple and gold and has been brought into the center of the picture. He carries the legendary staff or rod that always identifies St. Joseph.

After painting the Sposalizio, Raphael moved to Florence in 1504 where he became associated with Fra Bartolommeo, a painter who had become a Dominican friar after the death of Savonarola. Both painters must have influenced each other. In a version of the encounter of the Holy Family with the young John the Baptist on the return from Egypt  Fra Bartolommeo depicted a young, beardless Joseph.

Fra Bartolommeo: Encounter with the Baptist

Fra Bartolommeo did travel to Venice in 1508 to work in the Dominican house on Murano but I don't think it is necessary to posit a direct influence on Giorgione. The idea of a younger, virile Joseph was in the air, especially since his protection of the Madonna had long been seen as implying protection of the Church. After Giorgione's death in 1510 contemporary Venetian painters continued to portray a young, virile Joseph. Paris Bordone, for example, provided striking examples in versions of the Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine, an event that was usually placed in the desert of Egypt.

One of Bordone's versions is in a private collection but was featured prominently in the 2006 Bellini, Giorgione, Titian exhibition jointly sponsored by Washington's National Gallery and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. In the exhibition catalog we can see a well-built Joseph in the center with his bare muscular leg prominently displayed. I have argued elsewhere that this scene represents a "proxy"marriage where Joseph stands in for the infant Jesus who is obviously too young to marry.

Paris Bordone: Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine

Bordone used the same device in a depiction of the "Mystic Marriage" now in Leningrad. Once again, a young, virile Joseph displays his powerful leg. He is not an old man.

Paris Bordone: Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine

No one has done more to document the increasing devotion to Joseph and its resulting influence on pre-Reformation art than American scholar, Carolyn Wilson. In a paper presented as the 1998 annual Joseph lecture at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia, her description of Joseph in a 1566 version of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt by Santi di Tito could well be used to describe Giorgione's man in the Tempest.

Artists in our period sought in innumerable ways to convey Joseph’s protectorship of Mary, and, of course, her Child. These efforts are apparent not only when we observe expressions of Joseph’s strenuous exertions in scenes of the Flight into Egypt or of his tender solicitude in examples of the rest on the Flight but also when we note the inclusion in Nativity scenes of the accoutrements that signal his preparedness for the imminent escape from Bethlehem and from Herod. The latter include, for example, in Santi’s altarpiece the walking staff that the virile figure grips…
Looking still at this picture, we observe, too, that the placement of Joseph at the lower left foreground puts him near the devout spectator of the work…as his or her mediator. St. Joseph is also in position to stand guard, as he does with confidence and elegance, over the Virgin and Infant…*

The Man in Giorgione's "Tempest"  exhibits the same confidence and elegance.

In the next post I will discuss other images that have heretofore gone unrecognized as St. Joseph.###

*Wilson, Carolyn: “St. Joseph as Mary’s Champion: Examining the Distinctive Connection between the ‘Madonna del Giglio’ the ‘Compagnia di San Giuseppe,’ and the Church of San Giuseppe in Florence,”  1998 St. Joseph lecture given at St. Joseph’s University, printed in Joseph of Nazareth, ed. By Joseph F. Chorpenning, O.S.F.S., Philadelphia, 2011. p. 90. In that same volume see the fine essay on Jean Gerson's influence by Brian Patrick McGuire : “Becoming a Father and a Husband: St. Joseph in Bernard of Clairvaux and Jean Gerson.”