Giorgione, Vasari, and a Judith Fresco.

In his “Lives of the Artists” Giorgio Vasari placed his brief biography of Giorgione right after Leonardo da Vinci’s and ranked the young Venetian master, who died tragically in 1510 at about the age of 34, with the great Florentine master. Even though Vasari visited Venice on at least two occasions, it is hard to determine what Giorgione works he saw with his own two eyes.  But there can be no doubt that he saw Giorgione’s frescoes on the exterior walls of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, the center of the German merchant community situated on the Grand Canal near the Rialto bridge.

The Fondaco dei Tedeschi had burned to the ground in 1504, and the Venetian government hastened to rebuild the structure so important to its trade with the North. The new building was finished by 1507, and the young Giorgione was given the commission to decorate the exterior walls. The commission was a sign of Giorgione’s elevated artistic status, and its completion only added to his fame. The Venetian weather eventually did havoc on the Fondaco frescoes but the spectacular figures and colors were still evident when Vasari saw them a little more than three decades after Giorgione’s death.

Although extremely impressed, Vasari confessed that he could not understand the subject or the meaning of much of the work. He concluded that in the Fondaco frescoes, Giorgione

thought only of demonstrating his techniques as a painter by representing various figures according to his own fancy. Indeed, there are no scenes to be found there with any order or representing the deeds of any distinguished person, of either the ancient or the modern world. And I for my part have never been able to understand his figures nor, for all my asking, have I ever found anyone who does. In these frescoes one sees, in various attitudes, a man in one place, a woman standing in another, one figure accompanied by the head of a lion, another by an angel in the guise of a cupid; and heaven knows what it all means. *[274-5]

However, Vasari did identify one figure as the biblical heroine Judith. **

Over the door which leads to the storerooms for the wares, a seated figure of a woman is depicted. She has the head of a dead giant at her feet, as is the custom in representations of Judith; and this head she is raising with a sword, while speaking, at the same time, to a figure in the German habit, who is standing, still further beneath her. What or whom this figure may be intended to represent, I have never been able to determine, unless, indeed, it be meant for a figure of Germany. [275]

Fortunately, we have a print copy of the Judith fresco from a seventeenth century engraving. It shows Judith dressed in the finery described in the biblical account, with her bare leg resting on the head of Holophernes. *** At the bottom left is a half-length figure of an armored warrior who looks up at Judith. Given that the Fondaco was the German center, I suppose it was natural for Vasari to claim that the man in the scene represented Germany. Interestingly, like many art historians since his time, when Vasari has difficulty identifying a figure he gives it an allegorical interpretation.

I believe that the identity of the man in the Judith fresco can be discovered by taking a closer look at the Book of Judith. Whether in Vasari’s time or ours, churchgoers tend to be aware only of the highlights of biblical stories. But even a quick reading of the relatively short Book of Judith shows that a foreign warrior played a key role in the narrative. It is Achior, the leader of a contingent of Ammonite mercenaries serving in the army of Holophernes.

At the outset of the story Holophernes had asked his various lieutenants for information about the Israelites who dared to oppose his army from their mountain fortress of Bethulia. Achior came forward and recounted the history of the Israelites and the many times that their God had delivered them from adversity. He concluded that unless the Israelites had offended their God, it would do no good to attack them. Holophernes was shocked by this impudent prophecy, and had Achior left bound hand and foot near the Israelite walls to fulfill a prophecy of his own.

As for you, Achior, you Ammonite mercenary, who in a rash moment said these words, you shall not see my face again until the day when I have taken my revenge on this brood of fugitives from Egypt….you will not die, until you share their ruin. ****

The Israelites took Achior into their stronghold and treated him well after they heard his account of what had transpired with Holophernes.

The rest of the story was well known during the Renaissance. Although the book of Judith came to be rejected by Protestant scholars, it was very popular in the early Christian church, and its popularity continued right into the Baroque era in Catholic circles. During the Renaissance Judith was often paired with David for both were examples of God using the weak to triumph over the strong. Judith also came to be seen as a prototype of Mary.

However, the little known Achior made one more appearance at the end of the narrative. After Judith brought the head of Holophernes to the Israelite camp, she asked that Achior view the enemy general’s head in a kind of ironic twist to Holophernes’ own prophecy.

“call me Achior the Ammonite for him to see the man who thought so meanly of the House of Israel and recognize this as the man who sent him to us as a man already doomed to die.”…No sooner had he arrived and seen the head of Holophernes held by a member of the people’s assembly than he fell down on his face in a faint. They lifted him up. He then threw himself at the feet of Judith, and prostrate before her exclaimed: 

May you be blessed in all the temples of Judah
And in every nation;
At the sound of your name
Men will be seized with dread….

Subsequently, Achior professed his belief in the God of the Israelites, was circumcised and converted.

Vasari was mistaken in his identification of the warrior on the Judith fresco but there still could be a bit of allegory involved in its placement on the Fondaco dei Tedeschi.  I suspect that the placement of this scene on the Fondaco wall was a sign of the relationship between Venice and the German community in Venice. It is not hard to imagine that Venice was represented there by Judith, and the German community by the foreign Warrior looking up at her.

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*Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists, Volume I, a selection translated by George Bull, Penguin Books, 1968. All selections from Vasari are from these editions. Page numbers are in brackets.

**Vasari attributed this fresco to Giorgione but its location on the Merceria side of the Fondaco would indicate that it was done by Titian. However, I do believe that Giorgione was responsible for the whole iconographic scheme including the cartoons of all the work. In any case, this essay is about Vasari's eyewitness view and interpretation.

*** Judith’s bare leg has been discussed in an earlier post on this site.

**** All biblical quotations are from the Jerusalem Bible.

Giorgione and Leonardo

In his famous “Lives of the Most Eminent Painters” Giorgio Vasari claimed a connection between Leonardo da Vinci and Giorgione.

Giorgione had seen certain works from the hand of Leonardo, which were painted with extraordinary softness, and thrown into powerful relief, as is said, by extreme darkness of the shadows, a manner which pleased him so much that he ever after continued to imitate it, and in oil painting approached very closely to the excellence of his model.*[i]

Vasari elaborated on this claim in his biography of Titian which only appeared in the second edition of his “Lives”. He contrasted Giorgione’s work with the work of the Bellini brothers.

But about the year 1507, Giorgione da Castelfranco, not being satisfied with that mode of proceeding, began to give to his works an unwonted softness and relief, painting them in a very beautiful manner; yet he by no means neglected to draw from life, or to copy nature with his colours as closely as he could. And in doing the latter, he shaded with colder or warmer tints as the living object might demand, but without first making a drawing, since he held that to paint with the colours only, without any drawing on the paper, was the best mode of proceeding and more perfectly in accord with the true principles of design.[ii]

Leonardo briefly visited Venice early in the year 1500 after he had been forced to flee Milan following the fall of the House of Sforza. Vasari did not claim that the fifty year old Leonardo met the young Giorgione on that visit or even that they might have seen each others work on that occasion. He traced the influence to about 1507 when Giorgione only saw “certain works from the hand of Leonardo.”

Practically everything Vasari wrote must be taken with a grain of salt. He certainly recognized the genius of Giorgione and claimed that he was one of the inventors of the “modern manner”, but it would have been typical for him to claim that the young Venetian had been influenced by Leonardo, a Florentine.

Nevertheless, Vasari was a painter more than a historian and we must credit him with the ability to detect stylistic similarities in the work of the two masters. But what paintings “by the hand of Leonardo” could Giorgione have seen? Here I would like to discuss the subjects that Leonardo and Giorgione depicted.

In his study of Leonardo, Martin Kemp included a picture gallery of paintings.[iii] It is surprising to find how few works Leonardo actually produced in his long career. Kemp lists twenty-two independent paintings starting with the famous “Annunciation” of 1473-4 done in the Verrocchio studio, to the last painting, “Madonna, Child, St. Anne and a Lamb,” started by Leonardo in 1508 but only completed by 1517.

Interestingly, Vasari’s words about the early Giorgione, that he was a painter of Madonnas and portraits also apply to Leonardo. Obviously both masters worked to satisfy their patrons’ demands for portraits. Leonardo’s portraits of women from Ginerva de Benci (c. 1476-8) to Mona Lisa (c. 1503-1516) are world famous, but the majority of his other works deal with the Madonna.

Madonna and Child with a Carnation

Around 1475-6, not long after the Annunciation in the Verrocchio workshop, Leonardo completed the so-called “Madonna and Child with a Carnation.” According to Kemp, this painting  “shows Leonardo’s first steps in reanimating the genre of the Virgin and Child.” Madonna and Child sit alone inside a room with a landscape perceived through windows. The landscape, according to Kemp, “may reflect his interest in Netherlandish art.”

Benois Madonna

In 1479-80 Leonardo depicted another Madonna and Child, the so-called Benois Madonna, now in the Hermitage.  In this small painting “Leonardo has endowed the relationship between mother and child with new complexity, energy, and intensity of emotional reaction.” Madonna and child are still in an enclosed room. Although there is a window, it is impossible to detect a landscape.

Around the same time Leonardo also began work on a Madonna in profile (“the Madonna Litta”) which would appear to have been completed by his pupil Boltraffio by 1497. In this work the Mother is nursing the child and both are in an enclosed room with a landscape dimly perceived through windows.

Virgin of the Rocks, Louvre

In 1483 the Milanese confraternity of the Immaculate Conception negotiated a commission with Leonardo “for the large sculpted altarpiece in their chapel in San Francesco Grande in Milan, as part of a series of painted components and polychroming by Leonardo and the brothers Evangelista and Giovanni da Predis.” Two versions of this famous painting now known as the “Virgin of the Rocks" are still in existence: one in England’s National Gallery and the other in the Louvre. Kemp described the revolutionary nature of this painting.

the treatment of light, shade, and colour shows how Leonardo reformed their relationship in painting, using tonal description (i.e. the scale between white and black) as the basis of the definition of form.

However, the painting also marked a departure in subject. Madonna and Child have been taken our of the enclosed room and placed right within the landscape with two other figures, the infant John the Baptist and an angel. Rocks is not the right word for this landscape. Leonardo has placed his figures in a cave.

Instead of “Virgin of the Rocks” this painting should be called the “Encounter of the Holy Family with the Infant John the Baptist on the Return from Egypt,” or more simply, “Behold the Lamb of God.” Among the apocryphal legends that grew up around the scriptural mention of a flight into Egypt, was the very popular story of a meeting in the desert between the Holy Family and the Baptist who had also escaped the murderous designs of King Herod. Here is Anna Jameson’s account.

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.[iv]

The story became very popular in the fifteenth century and many artists depicted the meeting that centered around the two young children, a meeting that foreshadowed the meeting years later at the Jordan River when John would announce the beginning of the public ministry of the Christ. 

Why was this subject chosen for a Franciscan chapel dedicated to the Immaculate Conception? As the doctrine of Mary’s Immaculate Conception became more popular in the fifteenth century, artists had to grapple with ways to depict the concept. One of the ways was to identify Mary with the Woman from the Apocalypse or Book of Revelation, clothed with the Sun, with the stars in her crown, and with the Moon at her feet. After giving birth to her Child the Woman fled into the desert pursued by the great dragon or devil.

Until a text is found my best guess is that any depiction of Mother and Child in a landscape could be taken to represent Mary’s Immaculate Conception. In my interpretation of Giorgione’s Tempest I argued that Giorgione had not only put the nursing Madonna in a landscape but also had actually painted her nude to depict her Immaculate Conception.

It is possible that the “Virgin of the Rocks,” could have been seen by Giorgione. Another candidate could be the “Virgin of the Yarnwinder,” c. 1501-7. Kemp attributes both extant versions of this painting to Leonardo with pupils, and notes that technical examination of underdrawings indicates “Leonardo’ s direct involvement in making two pictures of this subject.” He also noted that in both versions underdrawings revealed “Joseph making a baby walker for Christ,” [v]a pentimento that would indicate another reference to the flight into Egypt.

Finally, there is the Mona Lisa.  Kemp states that the “basis for the picture was established in Florence around 1503-4, where it was seen by Raphael amongst others, but it appears to have been finished much later.”  It’s hard to believe that Giorgione could have seen it. Is this famous painting only a portrait or does it have some mysterious subject?

Of course, there is always the possibility that Vasari could have been wrong and that Giorgione never saw any of Leonardo’s paintings, and that both artists developed their revolutionary styles independently of each other. Nevertheless, it would appear that both were painters of Madonnas and portraits, and that both depicted scenes from the apocryphal legends concerning the flight into Egypt. 


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[i] Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, selected, edited, and introduced by Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, NY, 1967, v. II, p. 227.

[ii] Op. cit, p. 235.

[iii] Martin Kemp, Leonardo, Oxford, 2005. Pp. 247-254. Except otherwise noted all the following quotes are from Kemp’s Gallery.

[iv] Anna Jameson, Legends of the Madonna, Boston, 1885, p. 356.

[v] Kemp, op.cit., p. 41.

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: Christ Carrying the Cross

This famous painting was originally done as an altarpiece for the small chapel of the Cross in the church of San Rocco in Venice. Although the chapel no longer exists the painting can still be seen in the famed Scuola of San Rocco.
Early documents and engravings note the presence of the painting but fail to name the painter. In the first edition of his “Lives” Giorgio Vasari noted that that this seemingly miraculous painting was by Giorgione.

“Giorgione likewise executed a picture of Christ bearing his Cross, while he is himself dragged along by a Jew. This work was subsequently placed in the church of San Rocco, where it is held in the highest veneration by many of the faithful, and even performs miracles, as is frequently seen.”

(Giorgio Vasari, ”Lives of the Most Eminent Painters,” selected, edited, and introduced by Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, Volume II, NY, 1967.)

However, in his second edition Vasari’s chapter on Titian gave the painting to Titian even though he noted that many people still believed it was by Giorgione. Vasari complicated things by failing to remove the attribution to Giorgione from his life of that artist. It should be noted that Vasari’s first edition did not have an essay on Titian.

Today, most scholars and catalogs give the “Christ Carrying the Cross” to Giorgione. In addition to documents that hint at Giorgione’s authorship, stylistic grounds seem to favor him over Titian. At the 2010 meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, a well-known scholar gave an extended presentation on the results of years of research in Venetian archives in hope of resolving the question of attribution. She had to admit that the results were inconclusive.

The “Christ Carrying the Cross” appears to have been commissioned by a wealthy merchant, but it was always intended for public and not private devotion. Indeed, its reputed miraculous powers made it one of the most famous paintings in 16th century Venice.

It does not appear that Giorgione painted scenes of the Passion and Death of Christ for his private patrons. It is true that his career was prematurely cut off around the age of 33, but there might have been another reason. In a discussion of Botticelli’s depictions of the Madonna, Alessandra Galizzi Kroegel noted that images of the Madonna and Child with their subtle indications of the Passion and Death were favored.

“ it needs to be pointed out first of all that the Renaissance era saw the spread of practices of individual devotion to be carried out primarily in the home…From the theological perspective attention should then be drawn to the emergence of a new trend that…tended to identify the mystery of the Incarnation with the Redemption itself, focusing on the Passion with much less fervour than in the past: whence the growing popularity of ‘incarnational’ iconographies celebrating the word made flesh, such as pictures of the Infant Jesus in his mother’s arms…while the demand for images with Christ on the Cross, very common in the fourteenth century was drastically reduced.”

Alessandra Galizzi Kroegel, “The Figure of Mary in Botticelli’s Art.” Botticelli: from Lorenzo the Magnificent to Savonarola, 2003. (ex. cat), p. 56.

In my paper on the Tempest I have argued that the painting depicts the Madonna nursing the Infant Savior on the Flight into Egypt. The storm clouds in the background of the Tempest reflect the slaughter of the Holy Innocents by King Herod. While the Holy Family has temporarily escaped the danger, we know that the Child will return to endure His Passion and Death.
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Below is the last paragraph of my paper.

In the “Tempest” Joseph stands on a plane beneath the Madonna and draws our attention to her. There "clothed with the sun" she sits on a raised earthen throne nursing her innocent Child who is destined to return to Judea and face the same fate as the Holy Innocents slaughtered by King Herod. The Madonna looks out and invites the viewer to enter the picture and follow her Son on His journey.