Giorgione and Gabriele Vendramin

Titian's depiction of Venetian patrician Gabriele Vendramin and his brother Andrea venerating (along with Andrea's seven children) a relic of the True Cross is as much a primary source about the owner of Giorgione's Tempest as any written document. Scholars are unsure which of the two men is Gabriele but nevertheless, he must have made it clear to Titian that he wanted to be depicted in an attitude of religious devotion. 

In 1530 Marcantonio Michiel saw the Tempest in the “portego” or salon of Gabriele Vendramin. It is generally considered to be the first historical reference to the painting. In his notes Michiel described the Tempest in this way. “ The little landscape on canvas, representing stormy weather and a gipsy woman with a soldier, is by Giorgio di Castelfranco.” 

Despite this evidence, we cannot be certain that Vendramin initially commissioned the painting. I believe that it is more likely that he acquired it as he did other works of art by trade or purchase, perhaps after the death of the original owner. We do know that he prized his collection highly and insisted that it not be broken up or sold. However, other than the portraits listed in the inventory below, all of Vendramin's other paintings are of sacred subjects. For example, right after the Tempest entry, there is a  description of a version of a Flight into Egypt by Jan Scorel of Holland. 

Michiel’s notes were originally discovered in the early nineteenth century without an indication of the author. That is why the initial publication of the notes attributed them to the “anonimo.” The English translation of 1903 is available in paperback. References in the list below are to the page numbers in the paperback.

The Anonimo: Notes on Pictures and Works of Art in Italy Made by an Anonymous Writer in the Sixteenth Century, translated by Paolo Mussi, edited by George C. Williamson, London, 1903

In the House of Messer Gabrieli Vendramino: 1530.

The portrait of the same Messer Gabriel in half length, life size, in oil, on canvas, was painted by Giovannini del Comandador. The gold foliage decoration all around it was executed by the Priest Vido Celere. (122). 

The little landscape on canvas, representing stormy weather and a gipsy woman with a soldier, is by Giorgio di Castelfranco. (123)

The picture representing Our Lady with St. Joseph in the desert, is by John Scorel of Holland. (123)

The dead Christ in the Sepulchre, with the Angel supporting Him, is by Giorgio di Castelfranco, but was repainted by Titian. (123)

The three small portraits in tempera, one representing Messer Filippo Vendramino in a three-quarter view, and the others two young gentlemen in profile, are by Giovanni Bellini. (123)

The small oil picture on panel representing St. Anthony, with the portrait of Messer Antonio Siciliano in full length, is by…a Flemish master, and it is an excellent work, specially in the painting of the heads. (123)

124. The small oil picture on panel representing Our Lady standing up, crowned, with the Child in her arms, in a Flemish church, is by Roger of Bruges, and is a perfect work. (124)

 The portrait of Francesco Zanco Bravo, in chiaroscuro, with black ink, is by Giacometto. The large book of drawings, executed with a lead pencil on bombasin paper, is the work of Jacopo Bellini…. The two drawings in pen-and-ink, the one on vellum containing the history of Attila, and the other on bombasin paper representing the Nativity, are by Raphael.*  (125)

*The editor notes that even the drawing containing the history of Attila represents St. Peter and St. Paul appearing to Attila.

The only painting in Vendramin's collection that is not considered to be a sacred subject is the one we now call the Tempest. If we can see it as The Rest on the Flight into Egypt, what does that tell us about the interests of Gabrielle Vendramin, and what does that tell us about the collections of the other Venetian patricians that Michiel described in his inventory? Most of those paintings were also sacred or devotional subjects.

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Giorgione and Marcantonio Michiel

 

The notes on paintings in sixteenth century Venetian homes made by Venetian patrician and art collector Marcantonio Michiel are perhaps the most important primary source for the works of Giorgione. However, Michiel’s notes indicate how even the testimony of a contemporary eyewitness must be used carefully. 

Around 1800 Abate Don Jacopo Morelli discovered the notes among a manuscript collection in Venice’s Marciana library. Written in the early part of the sixteenth century the notes, made by an anonymous writer, concerned “pictures and other treasures contained in various houses, and monuments and works of art in churches, schools and other ecclesiastical buildings in the cities which the writer had visited.” *

Abate Morelli published the notes in 1800 under the title, “The Anonimo, Notes on Pictures and Works of Art in Italy.” Morelli used “Anonimo” because he could not be sure of the author. Today, scholars believe that the notes were the work of Michiel. 

The cities visited by Marcantonio Michiel were Padua, Cremona, Milan, Pavia, Bergamo, Crema, and Venice. In Venice the notes recorded visits to fourteen homes of Venetian patricians as well as visits to the church and school of the “Carita” which is now the site of the famed Accademia. The publication of the "Notes" provided a look into the artistic preferences of some of the greatest families in Renaissance Venice but also shed much light on the artists, especially Giorgione. For example, the notes provided the first mention of the “little landscape on canvas,” now called the “Tempest”, that in 1800 remained largely out of sight in a private home.

Altogether Michiel mentioned 18 works in the homes of seven collectors that were either by Giorgione, possibly by Giorgione, or copies by others based on Giorgione. While Michiel’s observations are invaluable for purposes of attribution, his brief notes rarely attempt interpretation or analysis. For the most part, he seems to be content to point out identifying markers. Even there he can be mistaken about the subjects of the paintings he saw with his own eyes.

A few years ago Venetian art historian Jaynie Anderson noted Michiel’s deficiencies in her Giorgione catalog. For example, she believed that in his discussion of a St. Jerome by Antonello da Messina, 

Michiel appears to be the passive communicator of received opinions, which he is unable to verify…The fanciful absurdity of his suggestion throws doubt on Michiel’s canonical status in similar statements about other pictures…. **

She also argued that his eyes deceived him when it came to Giorgione’s most famous painting seen in the home of Gabriele Vendramin in 1530.

"What are we to make of the famous description of the Tempesta, where a nude female, suckling her infant in an open landscape, is identified as a gypsy—‘la cingana’. …Yet Giorgione’s gypsy looks less like a gypsy than those of other artists;…nor is she engaged in any of the traditional activities associated with gypsies,…What did Michiel mean by his use of the word? Like all connoisseurs, he was not as interested in subject matter as we would like him to have been…Michiel, alas, chose to record only the briefest of impressions." ***

Despite her caveats, even Anderson was led astray by Michiel’s description of a Giorgione in the home of Taddeo Contarini. Here is his note.

In the House of Messer Taddeo Contarini. 1525. The picture on canvas, representing the birth of Paris, in a landscape, with two shepherds standing, was painted by Giorgio di Castelfranco, and is one of his early works.

David Teniers: Copy of a lost Giorgione

This painting has been lost but seventeenth century copies still exist. It gives us a very good illustration of Michiel’s limitations as an observer. He knows that the painting is an early Giorgione but his description does not even mention the two prominent figures on the left: an elderly man with a flute or pipe, and the young woman with arm and leg shockingly exposed. 

In my paper on the Tempest I have shown that Michiel’s brief identification of this lost painting was indeed incorrect. The subject of the painting is a “sacred” one: “The Encounter of the Holy Family with Robbers on the Flight into Egypt.” A popular legend of the time explains every detail in the painting including the lounging figures in the middle distance.

Nevertheless, his identification has stuck and led scholars to draw some fanciful conclusions. Anderson, for one, was surprised that Michiel had not seen in Contarini’s home the “notte” mentioned in correspondence between Isabella d’Este and her Venetian agent after Giorgione’s death in 1510. Anderson could only conclude that the “notte” or night scene must have been in the home of another member of the Contarini family. Yet, it is very likely that this lost Giorgione was the “notte.” After all, the sun is setting in the distance.

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*The Anonimo: Notes on Pictures and Works of Art in Italy Made by an Anonymous Writer in the Sixteenth Century, translated by Paolo Mussi, edited by George C. Williamson, London, 1903. Facsimile copy by Kessinger Publishing.

** Anderson, Jaynie: Giorgione, 1997, p. 57.

***op.cit., p. 60.

Giorgione's Tempest: Bernard Aikema's Interpretation

In December 2010 I attended a symposium at Princeton University honoring Patricia Fortini Brown, Professor Emeritus of Art and Archaeology at Princeton, on her retirement this year after 27 years at Princeton. The symposium entitled, "Giorgione and His Times: Confronting Alternate Realities," was also intended to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Giorgione's death. 

 The Symposium produced some thoughtful and even provocative sessions. The organizers at Princeton had assembled an all star cast. The four main speakers, Bernard Aikema, professore ordinario of Art History at the University of Verona; Deborah Howard, Professor of Architectural History in the Faculty of Architecture and History of Art and a Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge; Sarah Blake McHam, Professor of Italian Renaissance Art at Rutgers University; and Salvatore Settis, Chair of Art History at the Museo del Prado in Madrid and Director of the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, all had international reputations. I was particularly interested to hear Aikema and Settis both of whom have written extensively on the Tempest. As it turned out most of the fireworks at the symposium were produced by these two speakers. Both tried to deal with a very basic question. What can explain the obvious differences in the works attributed to Giorgione, differences in style, technique, size, and subject? 

Aikema indicated at the outset of his paper, “Giorgione: Myth and Reality” that he planned a very provocative presentation. He divided his talk into two sections. In the first, he presented a long analysis of Carlo Ridolfi’s seminal seventeenth century study of Venetian Renaissance artists, "Le maraviglie dell’ Arte ovvero, Le vite degli Illustri Pittori Veneti and dello Stato." Aikema claimed that Ridolfi was largely responsible for the myth of Giorgione. Ridolfi, Aikema argued, saw a dramatic change in Venetian art from Giovanni Bellini to Titian. It was a change from an old, traditional manner to a new or modern manner. Ridolfi then made Giorgione the pivotal link or transition between the two manners. To establish his claim Ridolfi had to attribute an extraordinary number of paintings, about 65, to the short-lived Giorgione. These works fell into four major areas: fresco, portraits, mythological, and large figures like the "Three Ages of Man." 

Aikema agreed with those scholars who have over the last century whittled Ridolfi’s attributions down to a handful. Nevertheless, the myth of Giorgione persists. He also argued that Ridolfi was wrong in seeing Giorgione as the bridge between the old and the new manner. Giorgione represented the “end of an epoch.” In the second part of his talk Aikema pointed out that Ridolfi did not mention the Tempest because it did not fit into his elaborate scheme. The Tempest with its finely painted figures in a landscape was omitted by Ridolfi because of what Aikema considered its obvious “northern” influences.  In this session Aikema went over much the same ground that he had covered in a 2004 paper, “Giorgione: Relationships with the North and a New Interpretation of La Vecchia and La Tempesta,” published in Giorgione, Myth and Enigma, the catalog of the groundbreaking 2004 Giorgione exhibition sponsored jointly by the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and the Accademia in Venice.

 In that catalog Aikema’s was one of three different interpretations of the Tempest. For Aikema there are obvious “northern” influences in Giorgione’s work, especially in a small landscape like the Tempest with its carefully depicted figures in the foreground. In particular, Aikema believes that a group of artists from various centers along the Danube, the so-called “Donauschule”, holds the key to the Tempest. In 2004 he wrote,“ the Giorgionesque  innovations share quite a few correspondences with the landscapes formulated around 1500 in the drawings and paintings of a group of artists, including Lucas Cranach the Elder, Albrecht Altdorfer, Wolf Huber, as well as Durer, who all were active in various centers of the Danube valley and whose work is known as the Donauschule.” [88]

 Although Aikema pointed to some sacred subjects depicted by these Danube artists, he believed that Giorgione was mainly interested in their depictions of primitives living in the wilds. Indeed, he argued that the subject of the Tempest is a deliberate response to these German primitives. His view had not changed since 2004 where he wrote, “ If our hypothesis is correct,…the painting presents itself as a kind of Venetian reaction to the images of a primitive German world, which claimed superiority to the Mediterranean one…” [96]

In Aikema’s opinion it would be useless to search for an underlying text for the Tempest or to attempt to identify any of the iconographical elements. The Woman could be a gypsy but there is no need to explain her nudity. The Man is not a soldier but so what. The broken columns refer to nothing else than the classical world. Why they are broken doesn’t matter. The city in the background refers to no specific event, certainly not the Cambrai war. He doesn’t even consider the prominent plant in the foreground. Finally, Aikema maintained his hypothesis even though he himself had pointed out the obvious differences between the Danubian works and the Tempest. Giorgione was just reacting against them. In 2004 he also admitted that there was no evidence that any of these Danube “primitives” ever found their way into Venetian homes.

In his 2004 essay, he regarded the Tempest is “the most original artistic expression of the fundamental historical-philosophical and ideological debate about the origins of humanity and the superiority of the Mediterranean civilizations and, more specifically, that of the Veneto….” Stylistically, the Tempest, a “unicum, a work effectively without successor in Venetian painting…”, is a finely executed landscape which marks the end of an era and which has no impact on the future of painting. “In the final analysis it seems particularly significant that the painting presents itself as a work sui generis that cannot be classified in any of the conventional typological categories.” 

Settis, the last speaker of the day, would have none of Aikema’s thesis. He attributed the obvious differences in Giorgione’s work to the traditional process of negotiation between painter and patron. The title of his presentation, “Format and Purpose in Giorgione’s Paintings,” says it all. The differences in format that are obvious in Giorgione’s work can be attributed to the purpose for which they were done. He also said nothing about “northern’ influence tacitly suggesting that Aikema was trying to concoct a myth of his own. In the Q and A that followed it was obvious that no consensus would be reached between the “northerner”, Aikema, and the Italian, Settis. 

Finally, I would just like to point out that in his talk at Princeton, Aikema failed to mention three paintings with similarities to the Tempest that he had mentioned in his 2004 essay. 

David Teniers: Copy of a lost Giorgione

“ It must be noted that the figurative elements in the Tempesta somehow resemble those we can discover in a painting by David Teniers the Younger…depicting “the birth of Paris.”… The question of the nature of the relationship between this lost painting by Giorgione…and the Tempesta cannot feasibly be resolved except by pure speculation.” [p, 102, n. 80.]  Only two paintings from the early 16th century inequivocably reflect the Tempesta; one is on loan to the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge, Mass., while the other is preserved at the Philadelphia Museum of Art….”[p. 103, n.99]

Rustic Idyll: Fogg Art Museum

Allegory: Philadelphia Museum

 

On my website I have presented my interpretation of the Tempest as "The Rest on the Flight into Egypt." I have also have also discussed the three paintings mentioned by Aikema. The first, formerly called, "Discovery of Paris," is actually "The Encounter with the Robbers on the Flight into Egypt." The second with three figures in a landscape by a "follower" of Giorgione is a "Rest on the Flight into Egypt," with Joseph's staff replaced by a halbred. The third depicts the meeting of the Holy Family with the young John the Baptist on their return from Egypt. If these three paintings are all "sacred" subjects what does that say about the Tempest, and what does it do to Aikema’s thesis?

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Note: This post is a reprise of a earlier post on Giorgione et al... that appeared shortly after the Princeton symposium. 

Giorgione's Tempest: A Vision

 

Rainer Metzger’s essay, “Everyday Life and Allegory, An Attempt to Understand Giorgione’s Tempesta” was one of four separate and contradictory attempts to interpret the Tempest in the 2004 Giorgione exhibition catalog, Giorgione, Myth and Enigma. * For Metzger the key to understanding the painting can be found in the young man who stands off to the side looking back at the nursing Woman.

“the gentiluomo has come from the background, from the town, a bridge has helped him abandon his urban life. On the far bank of the stream an ambience loaded with sentiment awaits him, dominated by ruins apparently left behind by antiquity and by now overgrown by nature….But it seems that the gentleman in his elegant breeches and the very latest fashion in codpieces has found a way to fight his way through to the promised land in the foreground. In this he has been supported by a shepherd’s crook, which is clearly only a prop and not an attribute, indicating not the beau’s profession but rather his obsession”….(114) 

The young man has no relationship with the Woman—she is a product of his imagination, an imagination based on his reading of the pastoral literature that was becoming popular in Venice around the year 1500. He is having a vision in the same way that Chancellor Rolin imagined the Madonna and Child in Van Eyck’s famous painting.

The nursing Mother in the Tempest is not a real woman but a personification of fertile nature.

“Here he observes nature in her freedom, and he sees her personified, in the shape of a nymph nursing a child. He sees her as he knows her, as he knows her from the writings that first caused him to take the path to the holy place of nature. It is perfectly obvious that she does not see him, living as she does in a different sphere.” (116)

For Metzger “there is no text, no single text alone, irrespective of its origins, able to explain the painting and its details motif by motif…”(115) The attempts of other interpreters to find the source in Plato, Virgil, Lucretius, or an ancient myth are futile. The city and storm in the background refer to no specific place or event; the broken columns are just antique ruins; and there is no mention of the prominent plant in front of the woman.

He does however attach much importance to one of the pentimenti revealed by technological examination—the nude woman dangling her feet in a stream at the lower left. Although the catalog entry argued that Giorgione never intended to place two women in the painting, Metzger believes otherwise and that the man was a later addition thereby creating a major problem for his interpretation. If the Man is the key figure in the painting, and if the painting represents his vision, why wasn’t he in the original version?

Moreover, like every other interpreter Metzger omitted a discussion of another pentimento discussed in the catalog—the little man on the bridge carrying a pilgrim’s sack. How does that fit into his interpretation?

The examples he uses are also problematic. In Van Eyck’s painting Chancellor Rolin kneels in an attitude of prayer facing the Madonna and Child. Giorgione’s Man faces the viewer but looks back over his shoulder at the Woman. Metzger can provide no image of a nursing nymph because they are never depicted lactating. He can only supply a crude reclining nude being ogled by an aroused satyr from the “Hypnerotomachia Poliphilo”.

Strangely enough, Metzger sees the Christian origins of the painting but since he can’t imagine that Giorgione would depict the Holy Family in this manner, he argues that the painter imposed a classical framework on the old model in order to suit his sophisticated patron.


“more important than any text is the painting, one painting, the Allegoria Sacra. Giorgione subjects it before the highly demanding level of Venetian aristocracy to a comparable reinterpretation from the Christian into the classical….But the vocabulary, the figures and the construction principles of the official route and of the sacred space with its location “somewhere” were Christian.” (115)

“Bellini’s Madonna is replaced, secularized, naturalized by the mythologically derived mother figure, and the holy quarter is a sacred grove.” (115)

He sees the Madonna and Child in the Tempest but cannot bring himself to believe his own eyes. 

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*Ferino-Pagden, Sylvia, and Nepi-Scire, Giovanna: exh. Cat. Giorgione, Myth and Enigma, Vienna, 2004. This catalog was the result of the historic 2004 joint exhibition sponsored by the Accademia in Venice and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Historic, because for the first time the Tempest left Italy for the Vienna showing. The copious catalog entry did not take sides on the interpretation of the Tempest but left that to the four scholars. 

Giorgione's Tempest: a Vergilian Interpretation

 In my interpretation of Giorgione's Tempest as the "Rest of the Holy Family on the Flight into Egypt," I did not address the many other interpretations. Not only did I want to concentrate on the actual painting, but also I believed that all the other interpretations had already been demolished by other learned scholars. As I said in my paper, not one interpretation remains standing. For example, if it's the mythical story of Paris and Oenone, it can't be the story of Demeter and Iasion. If the source is in Lucretius, then it can't be in Plato or Virgil. 

Nevertheless, this year I am revisiting some of these interpretations that I originally reviewed ten years ago. Most of them try to find the subject of the Tempest in ancient mythology or poetry. In two preceding posts I have discussed Lucretian and Platonic interpretations. Below find an analysis of a Virgilian interpretation by Rudolf Schier. *

 In Rudolf Schier’s “Giorgione Tempesta, a Virgilian Pastoral,” (Renaissance Studies, 22, Issue 4, 2008, pp. 476-506) we have another attempt to find the subject of the Tempest in the writings of a Roman poet. Schier argues that the source of the Tempest can be found in the Eclogues of Virgil, specifically the 1st and the 4th. In his paper Schier takes issue with other scholars but his own interpretation has serious omissions. 

Most importantly, Schier fails to explain the nudity of the Woman of the Tempest. He also does not even attempt to discuss the white cloth draped over her shoulder, or the plant prominently featured right in front of her. Schier’s interpretation centers on the Man in the painting who he claims is the poet/ shepherd of the Eclogues. For him the disparity between the simple shirt and jacket of the Man, and his fancy leggings indicates that Giorgione was making reference to the poet/shepherd represented in the Eclogues. I don’t think he does such a good job in this respect. First of all, it has been pointed out that the leggings are the dress of contemporary young Venetian patricians, and not that of a poet. Moreover, the Man is holding a staff and not a shepherd’s crook. Also, the Man in the Tempest is young and virile but, as Schier himself points out, the shepherd of the 1st Eclogue is an old man.

Schier maintains that the Woman and Child represent a “vision” of the poet based on the famous reference in the 4th Eclogue to a virgin giving birth to a son destined for great things. To portray the vision Giorgione “deconstructs” the traditional image of the Madonna of Humility into a Pagan virgin. Like others he sees the Madonna in the painting but can’t believe that Giorgione would actually portray her in such fashion. Besides his failure to deal with the “nudity” of the Woman, Schier seems to imply that in the poet’s “vision” she has just given birth. Yet the Child in the Tempest is obviously not a newborn. He supports himself upright, something a newborn could not do, while nursing at his mother’s breast.

Schier views the other elements in the painting in a similar complex fashion. The broken columns are first a sign that the poet is in “Arcadia,” but later come to symbolize the passing of the Pagan world and the coming of the Christian. He disputes Paul Kaplan’s identification of the city in the background and claims it is Jerusalem rather than Padua. But what does Jerusalem have to do with Virgil? He also disputes Kaplan’s dating of 1509 on questionable stylistic grounds. 

Finally, Schier includes a long discussion of the bathing woman in the underpainting. He regards her as a Roman fertility goddess mentioned in the Eclogues but removed by Giorgione because the Woman in the painting had already given birth. It is strange that he gives such attention to this “pentimento” while completely omitting any discussion of the other “pentimento,” the man on the bridge carrying a pilgrim’s sack over his shoulder. 

Schier is obviously well versed in his Virgil but his whole essay is based on the “assumption” that Giorgione’s knowledge of the Roman classic was as good as his own. Like so many other scholars, Schier views the young Giorgione more as an art historian or humanist scholar than as an artist. There is no evidence that Giorgione knew Virgil or Lucretius.

* Note: Dr. Schier responded at length to my original review article. I published his comments in a separate post. Since then, we have agreed to disagree and have continued an amicable correspondence.

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