Original subtitles

Good morning. In these lectures, we have not devoted much time to problems of attribution.

This is an area of connoisseurship, which is of great importance to scholars, curators,

and dealers, but should it concern the average museum visitor and art lover? In the broadest sense,

yes. There are works we know that an artist made because they're documented. There are other works

we think that artist made because they look like the works we know he or she made. To the degree

that we, any of us, are uncertain about that group, works we think the artist made, we cannot,

in fact, fully understand his art and its development. Giorgione or Titian? This question

has perplexed those who worry about such things, art critics and art historians, perhaps more than it

ought to. After all, the beauty or expressive power of a painting is what counts, is it not? Yes, but,

but, artistic style is more than visual handwriting. It is an expression of personality. To be able to

think intelligently about the whole of an artist's work and to know where to draw the line between those

paintings, in this case, demonstrably by the artist and the many that claim to be, anyone interested in

painting needs to decide to whom to assign certain works whose dominant stylistic characteristics are

shared by two or more artists. The problem is especially acute in large workshops, where a master may involve

his students in the production of works commissioned from him or sold under his name, or again, in artistic

collaborations, in which painters sharing a studio absorb each other's ideas and methods, or, in fact,

sometimes work on the same picture, either as specialists in certain aspects, for example, landscape or figures,

or as in the Giorgione-Titian problem, where one artist dies and the other completes his work. This prologue was

necessary to explain why we bother to revisit certain well-known paintings by Giorgione and or Titian from

around 1510. I realize that we have not even looked at Titian's art yet, only Giorgione's, but I think that

comparing some of the most argued-about works by these two young painters is probably a good way to

introduce Titian while distinguishing him from his colleague. This hotly debated topic is, I suppose,

the most well-known attribution problem in Renaissance art, and it stems from the fact that the two young

artists studied and worked in Giovanni Bellini's studio, although Giorgione may have left before Titian

arrived, and that they worked together on occasion. Add to that the early death of Giorgione, leaving some

unfinished works that were completed by another painter, presumably Titian, and the scenario is clear.

It's important to know which of them invented, as it were, certain paintings, in order both to understand

their individual achievements and the flow of influence from one to the other. Let me sketch

what we'll do in this lecture. We'll look first at the sleeping Venus, a languorous nude in a landscape,

and then we will look at the noli me tangere, do not touch me, is the translation, a sparse rendering of the

post-resurrection appearance of Christ to Mary Magdalene. In both cases, we will give special attention to known

changes in the compositions. The Adoration of the Shepherds, often called the Allendale Nativity after

a former owner, has been the cause of more acerbic argument than most such disputed paintings, including

the dissolution of the business relationship between a famous art dealer and an even more famous art historian.

The Concert Champetre, or Pastoral Concert in the Louvre, has bounced back and forth between the two young

masters. Traditionally, it was thought to be by Giorgione since the middle of the 17th century.

The standard modern catalogue of Titian states that it is, by Giorgione, largely completed by Titian.

And the Louvre, its guardian, after a long period in which they allowed it to be a Titian, have now returned

it to the more precious, because smaller, body of work by Giorgione. Then we'll discuss the concert,

apparently a group portrait, whose attribution has long been argued. And finally, in conjunction with

that, we'll look at two single portraits, of which one is now usually agreed to be by Giorgione,

and the other by Titian. Let's begin, then, with The Sleeping Venus. A painting now in Dresden, painted,

and these dates I will give you are obviously discussable, let us say between 158 and 1510.

I remind you it was a recurrence of the plague in 1510 that killed Giorgione, cutting short his brilliant

beginning, and presenting Titian, his friend and colleague, with unexpected professional opportunities.

Marcantonio Michiel, the contemporary source whom we quoted in the last lecture, reported in 1525,

that The Sleeping Venus, quote, in a landscape with Cupid, is by Giorgio da Castelfranco.

But the landscape and the Cupid were finished by Titian, end quote.

This statement so close to the creation of the painting is usually, although not always, accepted

as accurate, but it's still open to interpretation. For instance, finished by Titian does not necessarily

mean that the landscape and the Cupid were designed or added by Titian. Though some writers have deduced

that from Michiel's words, Titian might merely have completed them. First, look at two of this painting's

most important characteristics of style and of expression. The elongated body of Venus, a wonderful

pose, elongated almost into an elongated flat oval, I'm speaking of the entire body, is fitted into the

curves of the landscape. In, for instance, the rising middle ground and in this area right here, which is

a lovely harmony and harmonious comparison to the rise of her leg or to the opposite contour of her

body, the lower contour of her body, and also look at the left background. And it too often responds to

the physical anatomy of the Venus. So do the clouds in a general sense. This long, darker, sweeping area of the

clouds is also comparable to the shapes below. They're harmoniously put together. Her long, sloping curves on

this wide, low canvas unify her with the landscape. She's a pastoral goddess, and although she's sensual,

surely, I don't think she's particularly erotic. The cool, unselfconscious classicism of this sleeping nude,

which owes much to the stylistic devices we were looking at, distinguishes Giorgione's

Quattrocento temperament from the more erotic and coquettish nudes of Titian and the Cinquecento

that was just beginning. I'm sorry, by the way, to have been so coy about the Cupid. You may have been

rubbing your eyes or cleaning your glasses. The Cupid can no longer be judged, since it was so badly damaged

by the 19th century that it was painted out. Originally, it was at the right, just behind the left

foot of Venus in here, occupying this area, and is still can be seen with x-rays, what is left of it.

The drapery has no precedent in Giorgione's earlier works and many echoes in Titian's later works.

Therefore, it's reasonable to suppose that the drapery in front here is an addition by Titian.

The assumption is supported by the observation that the Venus does not lie on the drapery, rather it is

placed in front of her, just in front of her. And while it would be possible, one assumes, to find

the same model after Giorgione's death and have her lie down on a piece of drapery, that's a highly unlikely

thing. He would have changed it instead simply by adding drapery in this area to his own taste. He,

Titian, to his own taste. And it really is just laid in in front of the figure of the Venus.

I want you to take a good look at the hilly landscape with architecture in the right background.

This is most likely by Titian, since he reused it in another painting, which we will look at

shortly, the Noli Metangere in the National Gallery in London, reused it almost precisely. It is a quote.

Here is the Noli Metangere, a painting usually now dated about 1512, which is to say dated

after Giorgione's death, but not by everybody. The Noli Metangere is the post-resurrection appearance

of Christ to Mary Magdalene and his admonition to her not to touch him. Do not touch me, Noli Metangere.

Do not touch me, I have not arisen, is the completion of that sentence. The painting was once also held to

have been begun by Giorgione and finished by Titian. But the landscape, with an almost exact quotation

of the buildings on the hill that we just saw in The Sleeping Venus, would seem to disprove that theory,

at least for the landscape part of this painting, because it is the larger part of the landscape

here. It's a landscape as typical of Titian, and that includes the left part of the landscape too,

with this lovely light on the horizon. This is, this landscape, very typical of Titian,

atypical of Giorgione. Titian finished paintings by Giorgione, but he does not ever seem to have quoted

from them, so we assume that to be Titian. Then, the figures. The figures are united in a particularly

organic and harmonious design, quite beautifully worked together as a unit, and a design which

includes the tree behind them. They're not just in front of the tree, it continues, for instance,

the line of the Magdalene's body as she kneels before Christ. X-rays have shown that the figure

of Christ and the tree behind him were greatly altered during painting, and most experts agree

that the first pose and the changes were made by the same hand. Thus, the artist was simultaneously

composing and painting directly onto the canvas. Since the dramatic poses are of the kind we associate

with Titian, very dramatic poses. The consensus is that he is also the artist of the figures, and

therefore, the entire painting. Let's turn to another. The Adoration of the Shepherds, often known as the

Allendale Nativity, has long been a centerpiece in this controversy of Giorgione-Titian, not least because

it was associated with art world stars. The painting, now in the National Gallery in Washington, and

painted probably between 1505 and 1510, was then in an English collection, and then it came into the

possession of Lord Duveen, the English dealer, whose principal expert on Italian paintings was the famous

connoisseur and art historian Bernard Berenson. Then, as now, a Giorgione is worth more than a Titian,

because of the extreme rarity of Giorgione's paintings. According to John Walker, former director

of the National Gallery of Art, Duveen purchased the painting in the 1930s believing it to be a Giorgione,

and he sold it to Samuel Kress, who was a collector then new to Duveen, buying from him for the first time,

and he sold it to Duveen, to Kress as a Giorgione. Berenson, who was on retainer to Duveen Brothers,

understood that his name was being used to support the attribution to Giorgione, an attribution with

which he did not agree, and he terminated his connection with Duveen Brothers. Although the story's

been told differently, the conclusion is always the same, a rupture between dealer and art historian over

an attribution. To make the story much more interesting, a good deal later Berenson, in revising his

lists of artists, listed it as a Giorgione, finished by Titian. The Holy Family and shepherds in this

painting are very comparable to the Holy Family also in the National Gallery that we saw at the beginning of

the last lecture. Let me remind you, first look at the at the Holy Family here, and then we'll look at them together.

This very small painting on the left of just the Holy Family, the softness of the palette, the physical

types, the facial types, particularly of Joseph, are very, very similar to those that you find in the Allendale

nativity. They have the same intimacy, and it's an intimacy that we find to be particularly the trademark

of the work of Giorgione. That is very convincing. But there are some portions of the landscape, and

particularly in the brushwork of the trees, that appear to some eyes as being clearly by a different

painter. There is a more descriptive, linear quality to the brushwork in the trees here, for instance,

than there is in the softness of the landscape beyond. I tend to find that same difference, but I have

no solution for it whether Titian had a hand in that or not. Despite questions which are unanswered, and I'm sure

will remain an issue of discussion on this painting. The majority opinion, if you're interested right now,

leans toward Giorgione for this painting. The Pastoral Concert, or Concert Champetre, a much more famous painting,

painted 1510-1511, and its attribution is even more contested, or has been over the centuries. It is known

more commonly, we call it Pastoral Concert, it's known more commonly in the literature as the Concert Champetre,

or the Fête Champetre, simply because it's been in the French royal collection since about 1671, and in the Louvre,

since that museum was created, and where its influence on the many painters who were able to see it in the

museum has been immense. Traditionally, it has been attributed to Giorgione, as I remarked earlier,

since the middle of the 17th century. We can't trace it back before that, but from that time,

it was Giorgione. And in the middle of the 19th century, when Manet used this painting as his

inspiration for The Luncheon on the Grass, The Dejeuner sur l'Herbe in 1863, he believed it to be by Giorgione.

But in the 20th century, Titian's name was assigned to it with increasing frequency, and after pigment

studies and x-rays were made in 1949, showed design changes, it was proposed that the painting had been laid out

and begun by Giorgione, but completed by Titian. In other words, as with the case of The Sleeping Venus,

but with the difference that Titian was considered to have done most of the actual painting.

Still, after a long period in which the Louvre accepted it as predominantly by Titian, by the 1990s,

they had reassigned it to Giorgione, to repeat the much rarer painter. The x-rays just mentioned demonstrate

that the painting was changed while in progress, either by Giorgione or Titian. The standing figure

on the left, surely the most striking figure in the painting, was altered from a frontal pose to the

gently twisting pose that we see. Now, both Giorgione and Titian composed directly on the canvas,

without underdrawing. This is their innovation. But since the pose is more complex than Giorgione's

usually are, it's been argued that it was Titian who so radically and dramatically altered this figure.

The seated woman, on the other hand, on the ground, is very close to Giorgione's woman in The Tempest,

if you recall. Let's consider the subject matter for a moment. It's Arcadian. That is,

it is related to a pastoral paradise that was described in poetry from the Greek poet Theocritus

to the Latin poets Virgil and Ovid to the Renaissance, which evoked, invoked, a golden age of perfect

happiness for humanity. There one finds only a blissful existence in the suspended summer afternoon

of lives untouched by daily cares and needs and tragedies. That the golden age was understood to be

a time already long past in human history infuses it with a profound nostalgia. Certainly striking to the

modern viewer is the apparent disregard of the two men for the women. And, of course, striking to the

modern viewer is the nudity of the women against the clothed figures. Surely, at the very least,

there is a suggestion that the men and the women belong to different spheres of existence, although

I must say that the seated woman on their plane and looking toward them seems to partly connect them.

How? Seems to. Allegorical meanings have been suggested for this painting, but little agreement

exists on any specific interpretation. We can at least point out certain aspects of the scene. The two

women, although nude, are otherwise treated quite differently. The standing nude, reminiscent of

classical Venus's, turns in a graceful contrapposto away from the others, ignoring them while she pours

water from a crystal pitcher into a stone basin. She could be associated with the element of water.

The four elements, of course, are earth, air, fire, and water. The seated nude turns almost completely away

from the viewer, as we noticed, and she holds a recorder. She may, therefore, be associated with the

element of earth. Not only does she sit on the earth, but wind instruments were associated with the passions,

with the animal side of mankind. The two clothed men are in private conversation. Their faces are shadowed.

One holds a lute. In the Renaissance, the lute is an attribute of music, that's obvious enough,

but it is also sometimes associated with Apollo, thus with poetic inspiration, the creative arts,

the intellect. Or sometimes with Orpheus, thus also with poetry, and the ability to enchant nature. Orpheus

enchanted not only the wild animals, but trees and rocks, as well with his playing. From these attributes

and attitudes, one could attempt to deduce a more complete allegory. I'm not going to, but one could

attempt to. Because Giorgione produced at least two allegorical paintings for a patron, the Tempest that we saw,

and the Old Woman, we know that he was interested in such subtleties of meaning. On the other hand,

sometimes water is water and lutes are lutes. To insist on any too specific reading seems at odds with the

sensuous, suggestive visual poetry of the pastoral concert. Whether entirely by Giorgione or mostly by

Titian, this painting remains one of the most evocative paintings of the Arcadian ideal.

The Concert, which I mentioned to you, a painting again, much discussed. Painting 1510 to 1512 is the

dating most often given now. It's in the collection of the Pitti Palace in Florence. Giorgione left a few

superb portraits. And Titian is one of the finest portrait painters of the Renaissance. And the portraits

discussed here are, once again, a reflection of the Giorgione-Titian mystery. The concert reflects the

poetry of Giorgione and the incisive psychology of Titian. This is surely a triple portrait. It must be,

even though we don't know who they are. Just as surely it suggests some underlying meaning that connects

the figures. The keyboard player, the clavicembalo player, is the most striking figure because of his

incisively modeled features and his active pose in which he turns his head sharply to look at the monk

who holds a viola da gamba in his left hand, while the young man on the other side, probably the singer,

looks at us. On one level, it alludes to the three ages of man, as did Giorgione's three philosophers.

Music may allude to the passage of time, and during the Renaissance music was considered an essential

attribute of civilized man at every stage of life. Like many of the prior paintings, this one has been

attributed to Giorgione, to Titian, to Giorgione-Titian, and to other artists, too, if I've chosen not to

drag into this, into this affair. Titian has been favored during the past half-century, in part because

of the sharp, intriguing psychological interaction. Perhaps looking at the next two portraits will give you

some insights into this one. The portrait of a young man, unidentified, as so many portraits are, and

it is astonishing because so many of them are full of character, and yet we don't know the sitter. I would

suggest if you ever have your portrait done, please have the artist sign it, more than once, preferably,

and to put, and put your name on it, so that no one will doubt who it's of or who it's by. Portraits,

sorry for the digression, but portraits, clearly, when you have your portrait done, most people don't

assume it's going to leave the family, so everybody knows who it's of and who did it. Not so, and clearly,

historically, not so, so make sure that information is included on the masterpiece that is made of you

by a great painter. This painting is now in Berlin, painted probably about 155. It's related in type, though

not in costume, to the young man, the singer, in the concert that we just looked at, very similar type

of figure, and almost universally, it is now accepted as by Giorgione. Not in the past, but today, almost

universally. It has his quiet poetry, combined with a high Renaissance classicism that's less austere,

less remote than Giovanni Bellini's portraits, you remember the Doge Loredan, and somewhat closer

to the portraits of Raphael. The parapet in front of him here recalls the same device

in the Portrait of the Old Woman by Giorgione. We don't know what the VV stands for in front

engraved on the parapet, though many suggestions have been made about it. But always this quietness,

this recessiveness, in a sense, of this figure sitting back, is very characteristic of the art

of Giorgione. Let me show you the next. This extraordinary painting of the man with the blue sleeve

by, we tend to think today, by Titian, is a painting in London in the National Gallery.

Here, the gentleman in blue is also placed behind a parapet, and he rests his arm

in its voluminous sleeve upon that parapet. Though it's occasionally been attributed to Giorgione,

it is almost certainly by Titian, and the initials T-V on the parapet must signify

Tiziano Vecelio, his full name. I haven't given it to you before, but his full proper name is Tiziano

Vecelio. There is once again the enhanced psychological edge that we soon come to associate

with Titian. Where Giorgione is elusive, Titian is vigorous. Both can be mysterious, but a greater drama

derives from the lost profile, I mean his, the left side of his head in shadow,

the left eye, from his lost profile of the gentleman in blue, as well as from the bold form and color.

The boldness extends to the relation of that sleeve to the parapet. His sleeve is voluminous and overlaps the

parapet. We've seen many examples of Venetian religious paintings and portraits in which the parapet

defines the space, or the barrier, between the painted world and the spectator's world. It's the

picture plane, but here they're joined by this protruding sleeve illusionistically, and it is tactile,

and it does seem to project beyond that ledge, which is in fact the front of the picture plane itself,

therefore pushing into our space. It gives a tremendous presence, and the figure itself has a certain

ominous. Well, ominous is too charged, but a certain mysterious quality. This was once thought, as so

many things were romantically, to be a portrait of someone well known in this case, the poet Ariosto,

the contemporary poet, but the features don't agree with portraits that are clearly and surely of

Ariosto. It has, however, been plausibly suggested that it's a very proud self-portrait of the young Titian.

Interestingly, it served as one of the models for a self-portrait by Rembrandt, who saw this painting

and sketched it at auction in Amsterdam. At the same auction, by the way, he saw Raphael's great

Baldessari Castiglione sketched that, and the two of them meld together in his great self-portrait of that year.

I hope that this preliminary delving into the Giorgione or Titian question has proved interesting,

and that it helps prepare the way for our discussion of the early work of Titian in the next lecture,

at which time we will also learn more about his early life. Thank you for your attention.