Original subtitles

good morning the greatest of giovanni bellini's many pupils were giorgione and titian the elder

of these was giorgio da castafranco known as giorgione born about 1476 to 78 we're not sure

and died in 1510 we are unfortunately sure young a young man when he died giorgione is a name to

to conjure with in art history he's almost mythical in a sense he's rare that is to say his art is rare

there's little enough of it it is valued extremely highly and there is something almost mystical about

talking about giorgione because of the endless disputes over what is and is not giorgione a

subject which we'll deal with a little later on he's known as giorgione for short but castelfranco

was his hometown in the plane not too far from venice he must have entered bellini's studio in venice in

the mid-1490s when bellini's mellow glowing expansive old age style was beginning to unfold a sadly short

life confined giorgione's career mainly to one decade but within that narrow compass is a wide range of

subjects size expression and approach there are relatively few documents concerning giorgione but it

is clear that the surviving works on which his later fame rested were all made in the first decade of

the 16th century and most of them in the last six years of his brief life although he painted many highly

esteemed frescoes with large-scale figures those frescoes didn't survive in the venetian climate something

other artists found out as well the holy family which you see now is a small painting only 18 inches wide

painted probably about 1500 and you i must say that the dates here i'm suggesting are best guess dates in

most instances but it is a small painting now in the national gallery which like most giorgione has been

discussed and argued about over the time that it's been known but it is now i think universally accepted

as a giorgione in general the extant work of giorgione is small in size and intimate in mood the poetry of

antonello da messina influenced these works and the translucent oil colors which antonello had popularized

were quickly appropriated by giorgione who applied them without preparatory underdrawing i'll have more

to say about that this small holy family indicates how the poetry of antonello's paintings and of course

giovanni bellini's as well stirred a responsive sensibility in the young man the rich saturated palette is

learned from bellini but these shifting intermingled colors the yellow and blue in the lining of the

virgin's robe for instance here those are evidence of giorgione's own sensitive eye that kind of shifting

intermingled color is his own but look at the palette look at the beauty of the palette of the pale blue

a darker more intense blue the green yellow of the lining the rose red shifting to white of her

of her costume of her mantle joseph in green and with a pale gray lilac cloak around him

the intimacy of this family group is the heart of giorgione's particular lyric poetry

the intimacy is the overworn word is charming it is charming but it seems to me it goes beyond charm

the group itself is enclosed in a kind of elongated oval particularly circumscribing the upper parts

of the bodies of saint joseph and the virgin with the christ child diagonally disposed within that

uh oval the heads inclined toward each other most particularly that of saint joseph which is directly

above the head of the christ child and he looks down at him with his eye lips parted uh and and looking

directly at him this is a very big difference from uh paintings of the same subject of say a century earlier

when saint joseph might be off in the corner uh while the madonna and child are alone here it's very much

of a family picture and one of great great beauty and touching quality the facial type here the round

head the large forehead and the round face uh it seems to be a typical giorgione facial type at least in

some of these early paintings the madonna's is a slightly modified version of the same the landscape

is very lovely seen through a somewhat unlikely arcaded window it seems in what looks like a stable

after all where they are supposed to be but suddenly you have this rather classical arch

or at least a roman arch and you're looking through it onto the landscape with a castle in the distance

uh even this landscape which is like bellini's it's bellini-esque if you think of the backgrounds of the

landscapes in his madonna's and child out of doors it scaled down this landscape in the giorgione to

match the small scale of the figures this painting is a is a perfectly harmonized chord of color and form

the question of whether it was painted as an independent panel or was a predella panel for a larger

altarpiece at the bottom of a larger altarpiece such as one we'll see shortly isn't known but i think and

can't be resolved probably but i suspect it was an independent painting earlier one might have thought

any painting of this size was likely to be part of an altarpiece a panel from the lower part or some other

part of an altar piece but by this time and in the circle of giorgione around giorgione you find many

small paintings that were painted for devotional and some for decorative purposes as well and they're

often small and intimate and were clearly made for a wide private market that existed for them

hesitantly let this lovely painting go to show you his only surviving altarpiece a large altarpiece the

so-called castelfranco madonna uh in the cathedral at castelfranco painted about 155 and castelfranco i

remind you is his hometown the cathedral was dedicated to saint liberale and a saint you will probably not

not encounter outside of outside of castelfranco because saint liberale was was a local saint

uh and the castelfranco madonna is the altarpiece rather is about six and a half feet high perhaps

not large by bellini's standards but but it's large and it possesses a large scale that is to say its sense

of size is greater than its measurements it has a great deal of presence and projection partly because

the madonna and child are greatly elevated not on a pedestal i point out not on a pedestal but on above

an altar within the painting the throne is at the top this is an altar below so there's an altar and then

with a large platform on the altar almost like a reredos back uh altar here and then on top of that we have

the enthroned madonna and child and the the device of what i have called the cloth of honor continues

all the way down here from the altar below and in a different form i'm not quite sure of the color and

form but it continues above behind the madonna as well and her drapery the orange red drapery of um

that covers her knees and her lap spreads out to cover part of the base of the upper part of this

this is unusual be this design because it's a very tall pyramid with the madonna completely above the

other two saints their heads don't overlap the space in which she sits at all uh it is flanked by

saint liberale as i mentioned he is in armor here on the left and saint francis on the right easily

recognizable saint liberale is the local patron saint as i said and you probably won't meet him anywhere else

there is a checkerboard pavement in the in the on the floor which establishes the foreground space

and gives us a perspective step into the painting and then there is a landscape which appears above

the wall on either side of the madonna very much after the manner of bellini except that never in

bellini do you have this full-length figure in a larger space with the landscape flanking always a

close-up view it's as though if you took off the if you cut this across the knees of the madonna you'd have

something very similar to a bellini uh a bellini composition uh nonetheless uh it is probably from

bellini that uh that giorgione arrived at this invention of his the modeling of the madonna's face

is comparable to leonardo's sfumato it's not as accomplished as leonardo but it has the same

kind of of of of of modeling which is soft and continuous uh and done as it were with atmosphere

with color rather than with rather than with line rather than drawing it and remembering leonardo's

visit to venice in 1500 which i mentioned before giorgione's direct knowledge of his work is possible

just as we assume that bellini knew leonardo's work this altar painting is distinguished

distinguished by a classical simplicity of form and an airiness an airiness which is borrowed from the

landscape landscape background uh he links the two not only by the by the central axis of the madonna's

throne and the altar here linking the two parts but also of course by the diagonal of saint liberale's

uh very uh long pulled standard which pulls top and bottom therefore foreground and background

together soon after completing the castelfranco altarpiece giorgione worked on frescoes for the

exterior walls of the fondaco de tedeschi the fondaco de tedeschi was a warehouse on the grand canal in

venice used by german merchants the the walls were painted decorated the upper walls with frescoes

by giorgione and the folly of painting frescoes in the venetian climate all that water was soon

proved by the nearly complete disappearance of the work there is a ghost of one in the museum at the

cardoro in venice there's not much that has survived we have to just sort of take it on faith

and yet we know of their importance from their description the descriptions by contemporaries of them

uh he did not continue in the fresco business after after that uh he worked in oil paintings and i want

to show you a painting which may be considered to be related in its in the fact that it's a single

large figure to the fondaco frescoes that i just mentioned uh this is a painting of judith

with the head of holofernes we've seen the subject in a couple of different stages um holofernes beheaded

judith with the head uh this is painted about 154 today it's in the hermitage in saint petersburg

this painting not as large perhaps as the fondaco frescoes but close this oil painting was originally

about five feet high it was cut down especially on the sides in the 18th century so it changed its

feeling of of size especially when you see it in a photograph it's always surprising when you actually

see this painting it's larger than you expect from from having known it only in photographs but it is

somewhat similar to the single images the single figures that he painted in fresco it's interesting

however to us also because the subject of judith and holofernes is here painted in a novel way

usually as you know judith is shown in or near the tent where she slew holofernes and usually she holds

the head or is placing it in a bag held by an elderly female servant here she is shown with the head beneath

her foot well this is the way david is shown with the head of goliath she is a kind of female

david here there is no other example of this that i know of in which judith with the head of holofernes

emulates borrows from the traditional pose for david and the head of goliath and of course the two

great examples we had were the two sculptures by donatello and the later one by verrocchio she holds the

a long sword by her side and one foot um presses down on the hair or forehead

of the of the unfortunate holofernes who is not in a tent he's out in a garden i don't know what

she's doing out there one really wonders this is a painting that raises all kinds of questions who

commissioned it why did they want or why did georgione want to do such a different sort of interpretation

we're in a garden on a high hill with a sweeping view of a landscape simply not part of the traditional

visual way of presenting this story and yet here we have it in this in this image even the uh somehow

the bare leg of uh judith here is more reminiscent of the pose of the young david than it is of judith as

we usually uh usually see her it's as though here she's still somewhat seductive um that point is

passed she is she has achieved her goal but she's somewhat seductive and that's a rather odd uh odd

statement you you hear me shaking my head wondering what georgione was about when he made this unusual

painting georgione's tempest painted perhaps about 155 is one of the most famous paintings in renaissance

art indeed it's one of the most evocative and one of the most puzzling paintings in art history

there are three figures there is a nude woman suckling a child seated at the right under or in front of

vegetation a soldier on the left a kind of uh lancenecht in the german a kind of uh wandering knight

here not in armor but still conceived i think as a soldier and they flank the opening into the landscape

a lush landscape a storm menace landscape there is a stream between them in the foreground

and running beyond there's a brick platform with two broken columns beside and to the right of the

soldier there are stands of trees on both sides of the picture framing it and leading the eye back into

the space there's a bridge with buildings beyond in the center and there is also a wall a kind of

fragmentary wall to the left hand side behind the soldier here that comes in almost like a wing in on a

stage from the left the buildings as i say beyond the bridge in the center go back quite some distance

in space the sky is charged and i mean charged with the oncoming storm that gives the painting its name

i don't know that the sense of electricity in that is potential lightning and so forth has ever been

had ever been caught in painting before this time the palette is predominantly green and blue green

and it inevitably makes this painting appear to be a pastoral subject but in fact in fact architecture vies

with landscape for dominance in the painting and probably needs to be considered as as an important

part of the painting the interpretation of these elements has filled many many scholarly pages hundreds

perhaps thousands and what follows here is simply briefly my preferred explanation

that accounts for at least some of what we see in the painting i didn't invent it but i agree with this

with this reading the soldier together with the broken columns that's an image symbolizes fortitude

or constancy the woman and child christian love which is also called caritas or charity when we say

faith open charity that's a translation of caritas christian love and she is often it is often personified

by the woman suckling a child the threatening storm over the town and the country is a symbol of fortune

or chance all of these meanings are often attached to the specific things that we see here

whether you can sum all of that up into some grand statement is another question but i think we have

the basic thrust of the painting in those allegorical meanings of the figures as well as in the drama of the

landscape this subject this allegorical subject must have been dictated by the man who commissioned it and

the painting and it's such a specific subject that surely he asked for this from georgione now such

emblematic subjects were common enough in paintings and in books what is distinctly uncommon here is the

subordination of the subordination of the emblematic devices to the evocative landscape

among other things this is the first instance in italian painting in which landscape is given the

principal role not just a supporting role but the principal role it is the temper the fact that we call

the tempest and continue to call it the tempest is justified by the fact that the tempest is what we

remember when we've left this painting it's been discovered that georgione made substantial changes to his

composition now my purpose is not to discuss these changes but to point out that georgione painted

directly onto the support without first drawing his composition on the surface and that if he then wished he made changes

made changes to the oil painting this technique which is called a la prima simply you know you put it down directly

a la prima first thought as it were would not have been feasible without oil paints couldn't have been done with

tempera oil paints permitted it and while others like antonello had used oil antonello had designed

everything with great care the detail of the quote flemish school so here we have a new use of oil much

broader than that which had been envisioned before by italian artists and this is of great importance in achieving the

artists effects of ambient light and of a sfumato like modeling of form and feature achieved directly through

color through which outline disappears in the colored mass of the surrounding atmosphere painting as pure color

has been born one may say one may claim here and one can put this in contrast with the whole central

italian school florentine art where painting was in one sense considered as sculptural as emulating

sculpture you began with form sculptural form you began with form which was modeled with light and

dark chiaroscuro and then you colored it no matter how great the colorer colorist the painter in color

it began so often with that idea of a sculptural form now we have a painter who begins with

color he he models in color he conceives everything he perceives it when he looks at the at the world

he perceives it in chromatic masses and he presents it in terms of pure color and then

with that as his starting point he he puts the he infuses the skeleton into it he puts the structure

into that massive color i realize this is an analogous way of speaking but it is a very different way than

the florentine way color is the key here rather than sculptural form well musical analogies have often been made to

georgione's art supported by the knowledge that he was also an accomplished musician he was a lute player

and singer and he was in a a musically cultured city and in the tempest i might say that he's painted

his own pastoral sonata or sinfonietta even if that's much too early in time it anticipates musical

composers of a later era the so-called three philosophers a painting now in vienna in the kunst

historisches museum the art historical museum painted about we assume 158 159 is also enigmatic

and also deeply poetic three handsomely dressed men one young to the left one middle-aged in the center

one old on the right are grouped together on the right side of the painting their varied ages and

their richly colored robes suggests that they are probably the three magi on their journey to bethlehem

the magi are often interpreted in paintings by the way as the three ages of man many many times you'll

see the the three magi in procession and they're of three different ages so they're symbolic in that sense

and they came from the east which of course fits these costumes that they're wearing particularly

the figure in the center it's been suggested that here they are waiting for the star they've stopped

on their way for the star to guide them on to christ's birthplace this story is found in the golden legend

regarding the magi that they stopped and were waiting for further guidance their calm self-possession

is supported by the expressive landscape beautiful beautiful landscape in the center in the distance

with a wonderful blue and then a golden glow although the left side of the of the near landscape

the cave on the left has been badly damaged um in the life of this painting but the landscape through

the center into the distance is very beautiful but are the are they just magi are they just magi they have

no entourage. Magi usually come with a lot of people. No entourage, no means of transportation.

The title we use today and that the museum uses, Three Philosophers, is not a modern title. It was

bestowed upon this painting by the amateur and writer Marcantonio Michiel, who saw the painting

in 1525, which might suggest to us that the subject was always ambiguous and that Michiel

didn't recognize them as the Magi. On the other hand, if I take you back to my favorite

book these days, The Golden Legend, Iacobus Devaragine in his Golden Legend also noted that

there is, quote, a threefold meaning of the word magus. He then elucidates the meaning,

saying finally, or again, magus is the equivalent of wise man, in Greek, a philosopher. So, they

are both Magi and philosophers. Philosophy, by the way, is considered the mother of the seven

liberal arts, one of which is geometry, the measurement of the earth, and the attributes

of geometry are held by the youngest man seated here in the center. He is holding the compass

or dividers and the T-square. It may be significant that this magus philosopher, the young man,

and stares toward the cave that dominates the left side of the painting, a cave that might

presage the rock tomb in which the crucified Christ was buried. Thus, as one scholar suggested,

the implicit meaning is the vanity of human wisdom in the presence of death itself.

That sentiment is also the explicit and undodgeable meaning of the old woman, painted probably about

the same time. Here is a subject unlike any we have seen by Giorgione, an explicitly moralizing image,

reminiscent, for instance, of the medieval paintings done at the time of the Black Death,

or of northern European vanitas paintings. Vanitas paintings, vanity, vanity, all is vanity,

gives the name to vanitas paintings, meaning paintings that encompass the brevity of life

and the shallowness of temporal things. Those paintings, northern paintings of that subject,

were certainly known in Venice. This was not by anything, by any means unknown or mysterious

to Italians. This beautifully painted old woman points at herself while from between her hand and her body

unfurls a paper bearing the words, col tempo, with time. Fill out the meaning with the passage of time,

you too will be as I am. It is surely meaningful that this emblematic painting was commissioned like the emblematic

Tempest by the same man, Gabriele Vandermin. It speaks of a very particular aesthetic and ethical taste.

It's a measure of Giorgione's tact, or his genius, that he did not make this woman repulsive.

He could have, to make the point he could have. But he didn't. And it does not take great imagination for us

to see the young woman through the veil of age in this painting.

And that makes it all the more moving.

It is a rare viewer who is not startled from her or his complacency by this old woman,

pointing to herself and bearing that paper inscribed col tempo, with time,

referring to the inevitable loss of youthful beauty.

This is a most unusual departure from Giorgione's poetic idealism.

Vasari summed up Giorgione's high place in Italian art at the beginning of his biography of the painter.

He said,

While Florence was winning fame through the works of Leonardo,

no less glory was conferred on Venice by the talents and achievements of Giorgione,

who greatly surpassed every other Venetian painter up to that time.

Giorgione died of the plague, another visitation of the plague, in his early thirties.

But his work was continued seamlessly by the young Titian, with whom he had collaborated on a project.

So seamlessly, in fact, that an art historical cottage industry has busied itself ceaselessly

trying to securely attribute certain key paintings to one or the other of these prodigious artists.

So why shouldn't we?

We, too, will examine the Giorgione or Titian controversy in the next lecture,

because it gives us insight into each of them.

Thank you so much for your attention.