Come, Take This Lute: A Quest for Identities in Italian Renaissance Portraiture 0906540364, 9780906540367

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‘Come, Take This Lute’ A Quest for Identities in Italian Renaissance Portraiture

E. H. Ramsden

Brilliant, donic,

elegant,

Come,

Take

startling and

sar-

This Lute is an art

book with a difference, combining the authority of a work of scholarship with all the fascination of a detective story, but based not on fiction but on fact. E. H. Ramsden, the distinguished translator and editor of The Letters of Michelangelo, moves with ease and assurance through the Renaissance world, rather like Satan (if the analogy may be allowed), who came from ‘going to and fro in the earth and from walking up and down in it’, so that both painters and sitters are brought to life as vivid personalities seen against the social, artistic,

musical and diplomatic background of sixteenth century Italy. Although the book centres on an intensive study of five specific pictures, united by a provocative Prologue and Epilogue, the quest for identities has necessitated a close consideration of a number of works by other painters. The ‘myth’ of Giorgione has been critically examined and evidence from an exceptionally wide field of studies has been advanced in support of the author’s proposed solutions to a variety of long

outstanding problems.

While it constitutes essential reading for Renaissance

historians,

and art stu-

dents this original contribution is also calculated to appeal to the non-specialist reader, who may well enjoy the subtle wit of its presentation and the often astonishing nature of its content. A Nadder Book ELEMENT Books

LtTp.

The Old Brewery, Tisbury, Salisbury, England

‘COME, TAKE THIS LUTE’ A Quest

for Identities in Italian Renaissance Portraiture

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Frontispiece

THE CONCERT,

Variously attributed, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

E. H. Ramsden

SOME, TAKE THIS LUTE a

A Quest for Identities in Italian Renaissance

Portraiture

LD KEREY Ey A Nadder Book ELEMENT Books Lrtp.

First Published in Great Britain in 1983

A Nadder Book

ELEMENT

BOOKS LTD.

© E. H. RAMSDEN ISBN 0906—540-364 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical.

photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the Publishers

Designed by Margot Eates Set in 11/12 pt Linotron Bodoni, Printed and bound at The Pitman Press Lower Bristol Road, Bath BA2 3BL

Distributed by Element Books Limited

The Old Brewery, Tisbury, Salisbury, England

Contents

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I PROLOGUE If CONCERNING ‘THE CONCERT’ Reference Notes Illustrations 1-39

vil xill 1 5 69 re;

III CONCERNING THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY Reference Notes Illustrations 40-42

95 107

IV CONCERNING THE PORTRAIT OF A CARDINAL AND AN OFFICIAL Reference Notes Illustrations 43-53

111 124 127

V CONCERNING THE ‘LOST’ PORTRAIT OF A LADY Reference Notes Illustrations 54-74

133 A 175

VI CONCERNING THE ‘LOST’ PORTRAIT OF A POPE AND ITS IDENTIFICATION Reference Notes Illustrations 75—S4

VII EPILOGUE

109

185 194 195 201

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

207

INDEX

213

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List of Illustrations Note: all measurements are given in centimetres

Frontispiece THE

JUDITH

CONCERT

Giorgione Hermitage, Leningrad Canvas from panel, 144 x 66.5

see no. 25

STANDING

NUDE

PORTRAIT

Giorgione Galleria dell’Accademia, Venice Fragment of a fresco from the Fondaco

OF A YOUNG

MAN

Giorgione Staatliche Museen, Berlin-Dahlem Canvas, 58 X 46. Photo. F. Bruckmann: Mansell Coll.

de’Tedeschi, 250 x 140. Photo. Alinari:

Mansell Coll.

SELF-PORTRAIT

RECLINING

Guorgione or after Giorgione

VENUS

Gemaldegalerie, Dresden

Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Brunswick Canvas 52 X 43

Canvas, 108 X 175. Photo. Alinari: Mansell Coll.

LAURA

Giorgione

Giorgione Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna THE

THREE

Canvas from panel, 41 X 53.

PHILOSOPHERS

Guorgione Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna Canvas, 123.3 x 144.5. Photo. Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna

Photo. Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna

10

Coll.

Guorgione Galleria dell’Accademia, Venice Canvas, 83 X 73. Photo. Alinari: Mansell Coll.

AND CHILD WITH

CONVERSAZIONE

Titian Musée du Louvre, Paris Canvas, 108 X 132. Photo. Alinari: Mansell

THE TEMPEST

MADONNA

SACRA

11

SACRA

CONVERSAZIONE

Titian Museo del Prado, Madrid Panel, 86 X 130. Photo. Alinari: Mansell Coll.

SS. FRANCIS

AND LIBERALE

Giorgione Duomo, Castelfranco, Veneto

12

THE

THREE

AGES

OF MAN

Panel, 200 x 152. Photo. Anderson: Mansell

Att. to Morto da Feltre, Giovanni Bellini, Guorgione, Lorenzo Lotto Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Coll.

Panel, 62 X 77. Photo. Alinari: Mansell Coll.

VIL

Come, Take this Lute pap

13 A CONCERT Hampton Court Palace. By gracious permission of H.M. The Queen

Detail of bust

Bernardino Licinio Hampton Court Palace. Bygracious permission of H.M. The Queen

23

THREE

24

National Gallery, London

29

26

28

A GIGANTIC

HEAD

Att. to Baldassare Peruzzi, Sebastiano del Piombo Villa Farnesina, Rome Lunette. Photo. Anderson: Mansell Coll.

Detail from an octagonal ceiling. Photo. Galleria Estense, Modena

Photo. Vaght, Parma

THE CONCERT

The Young Man. Detail of No. 25

(La Famiglia Boiardo)

Viol da gamba, detail from the Organ Case.

THE CONCERT

The Cembalo-player. Detail of No. 25.

aie

Parmigtanino S. Maria della Steccata, Parma

CONCERT

Firenze e Pistoia

OF MUSICIANS

18s. CECILIA

THE

Canvas, 86.5 X 123.5. Photo. Soprintendenza pert Bent Artistici e Storici per le Provincie di

16 A CONCERT

Nicolo dell’Abate Galleria Estense, Modena

CONCERT

Att. Giorgione, Campagnola, Sebastiano del Piombo, Titian Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Photo. National Gallery, London

A FAMILY

THE

Anon. Palazzo Doria, Rome Canvas, 82 x 94. Photo. E. Richter, Rome

Canvas from panel, 90 x 123.

Att. to Lorenzo Costa, formerly to Ercole de’Roberti National Gallery, London Panel 95 x 75. Photo. National Gallery, London

CONCERT

Copy of No. 25 before 1723

SISTERS

Att. to Lorenzo Lotto, Pordenone, Palma Vecchio, Venetian School

THE

Engraving in reverse of No. 25 Teodoro Verkruys Dept. of Prints and Drawings, British Museum

Canvas, 80.9 x 100.2 THE

SIRIGATTI

Victoria & Albert Museum, London

14 A CONCERT

17

OF CASSANDRA

Ridolfo Sirigatti

Canvas, 76 X 99

15

BUST

Att. to Torbido, Morto da Feltre, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Lorenzo Lotto

29

THE CONCERT

The Cleric. Detail of No. 25

30

CARDINAL

FERRY

CARONDOLET

AND

HIS

SECRETARIES

Sebastiano del Piombo Coll. Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza, Lugano

19 THE CONCERT Viol da gamba. Detail of No. 25

20 THE CONCERT Clavicembalo. Detail of No. 25

Panel, 112 X S7. Photo. Brunel, Lugano

31

GEORGES AND

D ARMAGNAC,

HIS SECRETARY,

BISHOP

OF RODEZ

GUILLAUME

PHILANDRIER

21 BUST OF NICOLO SIRIGATTI Ridolfo Sirigatti Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Detail of bust

VILL

Titian Coll. the Duke of Northumberland, Alnwick

Castle Canvas, 104.1 X 114.3

List of Mlustrations 32

RANUCCIO

FARNESE

41

Titian National Gallery, Washington Canvas 90 X 74. Photo. National Gallery,

Washington, D.C.

33

PIETRO

ARETINO

Titian Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence Canvas, 98 X 78. Photo. Alinari: Mansell Coll.

34

35

THE RAISING

43

OF A CARDINAL

AND

AN

OFFICIAL

1966, 381 X 289. Photo. National Gallery,

Panel, 138.4 X 111.8. Photo. National

London

Gallery, London

ECCE

HOMO

CHRIST

HOLY

Carpt National Gallery, London

44 45

BACCIO

ANDREA

46

OF A LADY

Sebastiano del Piombo

Coll. The Earl of Radnor, Longford Castle Panel, 117 X 96

OF THE

SCRIPTOR,

M. BRACCIS

SIGNATURE

OF THE

SCRIPTOR,

M. BRACCIS

(extra plicam) Detail of No. 43

AT SIGNATURE OF CARDINAL IPPOLITO DE MEDICI Detail of No. 43

48

SIGNATURE

OF M. BRACCIS

(infra plicam—pro computatore) Bull of Clement VII, May 1533 Lambeth Palace Library, London THE

VICE

AND

ABBREVIATORS

CHANCELLOR

WITH

IN THE

THE

SALA

REGENT RIARIA

Engraving De Abbreviatorium. . . 1691: Jo. Ciampini

DORIA

PORTRAIT

SIGNATURE

Bull of Clement VII, November 1531 Public Record Office, London

VALORI

Sebastiano del Piombo Palazzo Doria, Rome Panel, 153 x 107. (detail) Photo Alinari: Mansell Coll.

AND INKPOT

(extra plicam)

IN LIMBO

FAMILY

DOCUMENT

Detail of No. 43

Sebastiano del Piombo Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence Slate, 80 x 66. Photo. Alinart: Mansell Coll.

40

PORTRAIT

Att. to Sebastiano del Piombo. Girolamo da

Panel, 97 x 107. Photo. National Gallery, London

39

SALOME

Moretto Pinacoteca, Brescia Canvas, 42 * 58. Photo. Mansell Coll.

Sebastiano del Piombo National Gallery, London

38

HEAD

Sebastiano del Piombo National Gallery, London Canvas from panel, remounted on board in

Sebastiano del Piombo Museo del Prado, Madrid Canvas, 226 X 114. Photo. Anderson: Mansell Coll.

a7

42

OF LAZARUS

Titian Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna Canvas, 242 X 361. Photo. Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna

36

FEMALE

Sebastiano del Piombo Prwate Collection, London Panel, roundel, dia, 24.1. Photo. Cooper Bros. By courtesy of Christie’s, London

50

DOORWAY

IN THE

CANCELLERIA.

SALA

RIARIA,

ROME

Photo.

a1

HEAD

OF SEBASTIANO

DEL PIOMBO

Engraving Vite... 1568, Vasari

he

Come, Take this Lute 52

THE

61

OFFICIAL

Detail of No. 43

53

CARDINAL

IPPOLITO

IN HUNGARIAN

DE

MEDICI

62

DRESS

Titian Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence Canvas, 138 X 106. Photo. Alinari: Mansell Coll.

54

PORTRAIT

63

OF GIULIA

Slate, 24 X 15

PORTRAIT

OF A LADY

Stadelsches Kunstinstitut,

Frankfurt

Panel, 113 X 79. Photo. Marburg, Marburg

GONZAGA

Att. to Sebastiano del Piombo, Jacopino del Conte Coll. Martius, Kiel

TERRACINA

dell’ Abate, Paris Bordone, Giulio Romano, Girolamo da Carpi

OF A LADY AS S. AGATHA

PORTRAIT

MONTANO,

Att. to Jan van Scorel, Sebastiano del Piombo, Sodoma, Dosso Dossi, Parmigianino, Nicolo

64 ALLEGED

PISCO

Photo. Cf. No. 61

Sebastiano del Piombo National Gallery, London Canvas, 92 X 73. Photo. National Gallery, London

sy)

LANDSCAPE

Detail of No. 63

GIULIA GONZAGA

Marble relief Prwate Coll.

65

HEAD

OF THE

LADY

Detail of No. 63

56

ALLEGED

PORTRAIT

OF GIULIA GONZAGA

Att. to Sebastiano del Piombo, Jacopino del Conte, Scipione Pulzone Private Coll. Panel, 95 X 66. Photo. by courtesy of Sotheby’s

OT

PORTRAIT

OF GIULIA

Dept. of Prints and Drawings,

GONZAGA

ALLEGED

PORTRAIT

OF GIULIA

GONZAGA

One in the series of copies of Gonzaga

67

PORTRAIT

OF GIULIA

GONZAGA

Att. to Sebastiano del Piombo, Bronzino,

Jacopino del Conte Formerly in the Villa Borghese, now destroyed Slate, 112 x 79. Photo. Anderson: Mansell Coll.

60 VITTORIA FARNESE (?) Roman School Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest Detail. Photo. Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

GONZAGA

Detail of Effigy Chiesa dell’ Incoronata, Sabbioneta Photo. Alinari: Mansell Coll.

68

RENEE DE FRANCE,

DUCHESS

OF FERRARA

Anon. Drawing, Musée Condé, Chantilly Photo. Giraudon, Paris

69 ALLEGED

VESPASIANO

Leone Leoni

portraits 1315-1580 in the Anbras Coll. Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna Canvas, 13 X 10. Photo. Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna

59

LUIGI GONZAGA

Engraving (reproduced in reverse) S. Zamboni British Museum, London

ALLEGED

Att. Sebastiano del Piombo, Jacopino del Conte Palazzo Reale, Caserta Canvas, 88 X 74. Photo. Alinari: Mansell Coll.

58

66

RENEE

DE FRANCE,

DUCHESS

OF FERRARA

Anon.

Musée de Versailles Canvas, 18 x 24. Photo. Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris RENEE DE FRANCE,

DUCHESS

Sketch: Rodi MS. Harleian MSS. 33, II, f.155 British Library, London Photo. British Library

OF FERRARA

List of Illustrations 71

Lt

SALOME

Sebastiano del Piombo National Gallery, London Panel, 54 X 43. Photo. National Gallery, London

PAUL III

Titian

Gallerie Nazionali di Capodimonte, Naples Canvas, 144 X 89. Photo. Alinari: Mansell Coll.

70 CLEMENT vit (detail)

2

Sebastiano del Piombo Gallerie Nazionali di Capodimonte, Naples Slate, 50 x 34. Photo. Brogi: Mansell Coll.

S. DOROTHEA

Sebastiano del Piombo Staatliche Museen, Berlin-Dahlem Panel, 70 x 60. Photo. Mansell Coll.

73

he)

CLEMENT

VII

Medal Dept. of Coins and Medals, British Museum, London

LA FORNARINA

Sebastiano del Piombo

Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

80

Canvas, 66 X 53. Photo. Anderson: Mansell Coll.

PAUL III

Detail of No. 77

74 THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE (BONAPARTE)

81

PAUL

III

Medal Dept. of Coins and Medals, British Museum, London

F. P. Gérard Musée de Versailles Canvas. 1807

82

CARDINAL YOUNG

75

THE

“OSE”

PORTRAIT

ATTENDANT

OF A POPE AND

FARNESE

AS A

Titian Gallerie Nazionali di Capodimonte, Naples Canvas, 99 X 78. Photo. Alinari: Mansell Coll.

AN

FIGURE

Sebastiano del Piombo Galleria Nazionale, Parma Slate, 102 x &&. Photo. Anderson: Mansell Coll.

ALESSANDRO

MAN

83

CARDINAL

ALESSANDRO

FARNESE

IN LATER

LIFE

Medal

76

CLEMENT

Dept. of Coins and Medals, British Museum, London

VII

Sebastiano del Piombo

Gallerie Nazionali di Capodimonte, Naples Canvas, 145 X 100. Photo. Alinari: Mansell Coll.

84

CARDINAL

ALESSANDRO

FARNESE

Detail of No. 75

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Acknowledgements

Because formal acknowledgements are apt in the nature of the case to appear perfunctory, it is never easy at the best of times to convey in commensurate terms the profoundness of one’s sense of obligation for the expert advice and incidental kindnesses experienced during the course of the work. But the task is rendered even more difficult when, as in the present instance, the researches were intermittently pursued over a number of years, since, with the lapse of time, some oversights may perhaps have occurred. Should this unhappily and unpardonably prove to be the case, I should like to apologise in advance before we go to press, pleading in extenuation, if I may, how hard it is to remember over a prolonged period what one has forgotten. First of all I have pleasure in expressing my gratitude to the Duke of Northumberland and to the Earl of Radnor for the privilege of being allowed to view their collections privately and to the Principessa Doria, who graciously made special arrangements for me to see the copy of The Concert in her possession. As to The Concert itself, | am especially grateful to Dott. Marco Chiarini, Director of the Galleria Palatina in Florence, for the facilities accorded me to study the picture

in the laboratory during various stages of its restoration and for much generous support, besides. Owing to the wide range of interests covered by “The Lute’ I was under the necessity of seeking the guidance of specialists in a variety of fields. This was always forthcoming with the utmost courtesy and readiness to assist. Accordingly, it is with a feeling of real obligation that I now acknowledge my indebtedness to Dott. Gino Corti for the researches in the Florentine archives which he kindly undertook on my behalf; to Dott.es@ Paola Della Pergola, formerly Director of the Villa Borghese, for her singular kindness in matters connected with the Collection; to Dr. M. Aylwin Cotton and to Dott. Benedetto Soccodato, formerly Sindaco of Fondi, for their careful consideration ,of certain topographical problems; to Dott. Vito Consumano of Cremona, and Dott. Fernando Sacconi of New York, as also to Dr. J. van Nieuwenhuizen, Archivist of Antwerp Cathedral; to the Directors of W. E. Hill, to Eric Halfpenny, Joan Rimmer, Stafford Cape, Madeau Stewart and Dana Josephson

for musicological advice. My thanks are also due to the late Professor Dom David Knowles and Peter Anson for their observations on clerical dress and likewise to Signora Rosita Levi Pisetzky for her detailed comments on certain aspects of secular pa costume, during the sixteenth century. For specialist archival information I am similarly indebted to Ronald Lightbown, Librarian of the Library of the Victoria & Albert Museum, to Nannie Bridgman of the Bibliothéque Nationale, to Michael Borrie of the Dept. of MSS, British Library, to Dr. D. H. Gifford, formerly Principal Assistant Keeper, Public Records Office, to Jane

Sayers, formerly Assistant Archivist, Lambeth Palace Library, to Reginald Williams

XU

Acknowledgements of the Dept. of Prints & Drawings, British Museum, and to Dott. Bruno Casini of the Archivio di Stato, Pisa.

For assistance of diverse kinds and for information that might not otherwise have come my way I am also beholden to Philippa MacLeish of the Society of Authors, to Peter Bicknell, Director of Floris, to Richard Smart, to Peter Burman, to Marjorie

Finnis and to the Staff both of the London Library and of the Art Library of the Victoria & Albert Museum. On the production side it is my great pleasure first and foremost to pay tribute to Angela Milburn for her good offices on my behalf, without which the present enterprise might never have initiated. Next, I should like to thank my Publisher,

Michael Mann and C. D. Green of the Pitman Press for their unfailing co-operation throughout the undertaking. In regard to the Illustrations. | could not be more grateful to Miss Boutroy for her kindly consideration over a number of years, or to Professor Angelo di Santis for his gesture of confidence in lending me a unique photograph of a marble relief, the whereabouts of which is no longer known. But what, in conclusion, can I say to my Devil’s advocate, Margot Eates, for so

much and so much? Chelsea, 1983

rw

E.H.R.

l Prologue 6

(caasied Take this Lute’, may seem a rather odd title for a book that is neither a work of fiction nor a musicological discourse, but is, instead, an art book, albeit an art book with a difference, being at one and the

same time a study in method and a detective story into the bargain. It centres in the consideration of five pictures, which happen, for one reason or another, to be interrelated and is concerned with the

identification of the personalities involved, painters, sitters or both, personalities, for the most part of peculiar fascinations, the study of whose lives has afforded an unexpected insight into some of the less familiar aspects of Renaissance life. To the layman it may come as something of a surprise or even as a shock to learn that the names of the painters or sitters attached even to well-known paintings are by no means always to be relied upon. But in that case how does one proceed to discover and to establish the truth of the matter? It is in an attempt to answer the questions ‘By whom’? ‘Of whom’? ‘Where’? and ‘When’?, with which the beholder

finds himself confronted, that the present enquiry has been undertaken, in the hope of offering solutions, if not always with complete certainty, at least with some measure of plausibility. In the absence of documentary proof and where there is a difference of opinion regarding the stylistic evidence provided, there are other considerations that may be taken into account and others, again, not always reputable, that may prevail when it comes to the question of attribution. For as Browning put it—’T’ faith | know not why | should care/To break the silence that suits them best/But the thing grows somewhat hard to bear/When I find that Giotto join|s| the rest’. How flattering, therefore, to one’s amour propre should one’s Lancret be mistaken for a Watteau and how gratifying in the event when one’s Vanloo turns out to be a Fragonard—not,

of course, that intrinsic

values are in any way affected by these changes of attribution, since aesthetically they remain the same. It must be allowed, however, that where prestige is at stake in matters of this kind little else counts, in which context to propound the question, “What's in a name?’ would

Chapter I patently be both stupid and naive. How, otherwise, could one account for the fact that whereas in the past so-called connoisseurship could

be taxed to the limits in favour of a Giorgione, however inferior, while

a work of supreme quality, but without the association of a coveted name, could be virtually forgotten, having been assigned to no less than nine painters in succession, many of them indifferent performers. There is, thus, no denying that in the art world there are certain figures, who, for their contemporaries and for posterity alike, have always held an extraordinary appeal. So much so that they have acquired an almost legendary reputation, with the inevitable result that for some critics the temptation to augment their oeuvre has oft times, moreover, proved irresistible. Such, however are the nonsen-

sical arguments that have been advanced in support of their claims that the following imagined disquisition is, in fact, much less of a parody than might be credited. Ladies and Gentlemen,

I think it may not be inappropriate to devote this evening to a consideration of the life and works of one of the greatest Italian masters of the cinquecento. I refer, of course, to the immortal Lorenzo |’Incredibile, as he came to be called, an artist

who, without exaggeration, may justly be described as unique. For besides being himself a painter of unsurpassed excellence, he has claims to being regarded as perhaps the most potent of all the potent influences of his time and generation. Before discussing his achievements as an artist, I should like, if I may. to say something about his life, the environment to which he belonged, the patrons whom

he served and the host of lesser painters upon whom he left so indelible a mark of his own genius. Lorenzo l’Incredibile was born in Italy in the late fifteenth century. Unfortunately, we do not know for certain where this event took place, but we shall probably not be far wrong, if we assume it to have been in Venetia rather than in Umbria or

Tuscany; nor I think too imprecise if we place the date at some time during the second half of the quattrocento, since, regrettably, we have been unable to trace any record of the exact date. The name of his father has not survived, but his mother, like so many Italian women, was in all probability a contadina, living at the time of the child’s birth in the same region as the boy’s father. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, we may, I think, suppose him to have been an ‘unnatural’ son. As a youth Lorenzo is reputed to have shown a prodigious aptitude for drawing and at the age of fifteen, but in any case sometime between his fourteenth and sixteenth year is said to have entered the bottega of the Master of the Floppa altarpiece. Here, as may well be imagined, he rapidly surpassed his master, being naturally endowed to give rather than to receive instruction. It would seem, nevertheless, that he sat lightly to life, if we may accept a contemporary reference to one, Lorenzo pictor, who had a hand in preparing the decorations for a ducal

masque; on which account we may hazard a guess that he became a member of a Compagnia della Calza. If so we may be sure that among the young gallants of his

Prologue day he will have worn his parti-coloured hose, like his genius, with a difference. Shortly after this he would appear to have left his native province, since, when next we catch a glimpse of him (fleeting though this may be), he seems to have

entered the service of the renowned condottiere, Ricardo Turpinari. We know, at

least, that his name has always been intimately associated with the magnificent frescoes illustrating the Temptation of S. Antonio (an ever recurrent theme) which he executed in the famous Turpinari Chapel. According to tradition, the scenes in question were depicted with a verisimilitude mfuch in advance of the period and in a style calculated rather to please his patron than to satisfy the requirements of the Church. On this point, however, it might be a mistake to dogmatize, seeing that of these scenes nothing now remains, save a small decorative fragment high above the entrance. But here, at least, in the dimly discerned lines of an arabesque, retouched a secco but now, alas, in an imperfect condition, the authentic hand of the master is significantly proclaimed. Yet fragmentary though the lines may be, who can doubt their eloquence or fail to perceive in them the origin of much that was big with promise for the future, as was later to be revealed to us in the work of his younger contemporaries? About the movements of the master during the next twenty years or so—the most fecund period of his oeuvre—we know little or nothing of importance, though it is safe to say that the range of his powers and the fertility of his imagination were in no way diminished with the years. Of the two paintings once in the collection of the Duke of Ferrara, which have now disappeared, one was of an unknown man, reputed

to be the artist’s father, and the other an allegorical piece not certainly identified, there being no mention of it in the inventory taken at the time of the Duke’s death. The authenticity of the three other pictures associated with the great name of Lorenzo is more questionable. Like the Massacre of the Innocents, neither the Rape of Helen nor the Triumph of Chastity can be accepted without some misgiving, though a number of the more renowned conoscitori have expressed themselves as being in favour of the Rape. This opinion is based presumably upon the fancied resemblance,

which some

have discerned in the figure of Helen to

Lorenzo’s mistress, whom he variously portrayed as Hagar, Lucrezia and S. Agnes, likenesses that now survive only in copies of uncertain attribution. Considering the wealth of invention that is everywhere displayed in his paintings, it is disappointing that so few of his drawings have come down to us. Nor indeed, about those which remain is informed opinion entirely undivided. And here it is that I would venture to part company with my distinguished colleague Dr. Klarmacher, who has devoted two volumes to a consideration of the problem. Personally, I should be prepared to accept the ascription of a sketch of a cow grazing by a stream with a female nude in the foreground, despite the fact that Dr. Klarmacher has made out a plausible case for assigning it to one of Lorenzo’s assistants, simply on the grounds that the same figure, viewed from the back, appears in the younger man’s Susannah and the Elders, which is known to us from an early eighteenth century engraving in reverse. Of the two other drawings, both

in the Guazzabuglio collection, but neither undisputed, one is an anatomical drawing of a horse’s hoof and the other a somewhat confused study of a fish with a silver trumpet, possibly relating to a rebus, the interpretation of which has not so far been determined. The latter might, or, on the other hand, might not be an

authentic work of the master. Whether Lorenzo died before or after 1535 is debatable, neither is it known where he died, but as his name is nowhere mentioned in the archives of foreign

potentates, we may assume that he died in Italy, just as we may assume that he

Chapter I died either before or after the approximate date suggested, since neither Michiel

nor Ridolfi make any mention of him at this period. Thus the silence of Thieme-Becker and the neglect of the Serenissuma notwithstanding, it will be obvious to you even from the brief account of the life and achievements of Lorenzo |’Incredibile that in the short time at our disposal I have been able to present to you, that there is no star brighter than he in the diadem of our country, no artist in the annals of art, whose contribution we would more gratefully acknowledge.

But to return to the subject of the present title: ‘Come, take this lute’ is a quotation from a learned disquisition on The Concert, in which the author sought to reconstruct the scene when the painter first posed his sitters. ‘Not to know a hawk from a handsaw’, as the saying goes, is of no consequence in this context, but not to distinguish a lute from a viol, in the same context, is a different

matter, typifying, as it does, the kind of uncritical thinking that all too frequently prevails. At the same time, it exemplifies the pitfalls, or ‘fallpits’, as they were once called, by which our own paths are beset and into which we may so easily fall ourselves, and that despite the more ample resources now at our command. We all-make mistakes, besides which it is always easier to see other people’s errors than to correct one’s own. It is not therefore in a captious or contentious spirit that I have approached the task ahead, but rather in a dispassionate, yet piercing spirit of enquiry, if not in the expectation, at least in the hope of approximating more nearly to the truth.

A

I Concerning ‘The Concert’

One morning during a visit to the Palazzo Pitti in Florence in the early autumn of 1956 two strangers stood side by side in contemplation of The Concert. At length, after a prolonged study of the picture, one turned to the other on the impulse of the moment saying, ‘Are you satisfied with the present attribution to Titian?’ ‘No’, replied the other, ‘but to whom else would you attribute it?’ ‘I should prefer Giorgione’, answered the first, ‘he has more mystery’. He has more mystery—so the legend still holds, and thus it is, after four hundred years, that Giorgione’s name still retains its fascination for the layman and for the connoisseur alike. But a predilection is not enough; something more is required to sustain a preference and to substantiate the claims of one painter as opposed to those of another. It therefore behoves us to examine the grounds of Giorgione’s unique reputation and on this basis to estimate the probabilities, or otherwise, of The Concert being by his hand, as

was originally believed. Traditionally Giorgione has always been acclaimed as the founder of sixteenth century Venetian painting, the source and inspiration of all that was to follow, yet even those who are most enamoured of his art find themselves obliged to admit the largely mythical nature of his contribution. ‘Giorgione opened a new and splendid era of prodigious fecundity’, wrote Adolfo Venturi,! who in these words epitomizes the general consensus of critical opinion. In contrast to an explicit content embodied in clear-cut spatially inter-related forms, such as we associate with Carpaccio and the Bellini, all is now fused into a romantic glow. In tendency the focus of interest shifts from the sacred to the profane, religious fervour gives place to poetic fantasy and reality is subordinated to the dream. Absorbed in his own inner world, man, no longer detached from his surroundings but merged with them, treads lightly upon the earth and for the first time landscape acquires an importance of its own. Colour, or more specifically tone, becomes the predominant element in the composition, chiaroscuro

Frontispiece

Zo

Chapter I

supervenes over line, contours and tints are harmoniously blended and a unifying atmosphere of mystery prevails. A re-orientation of the spirit, coincident with the advent of humanism, a turning away from medieval habits of thought towards a more liberal ideal—all this and more, it seems, is crystallized and enshrined in Giorgione’s art—of which so singularly little survives to tell the tale. Not, however, that this is of any particular consequence, if Lionello Venturi2 may be believed. Of the twenty-three works which in his view may be said to comprise Giorgione’s oeuvre, two are officially documented, two are mentioned in a contemporary letter, fifteen are recorded within thirty-two years of Giorgione’s death by Marcantonio Michiel, the polygrafist and amateur, to ,whom they were known either in the original or in copies, and four, by universal

consent,

are only

attributed. ‘A few of these’, says Venter. ‘are inhibited, me

timid

in approach, but the rest are broader and freer in treatment’. As an example of the earlier manner he cites the Castelfranco altarpiece of 1504 and of the later the

1

Fondaco de’Tedeschi frescoes of 1508, “so

that near the beginning of the ten years of Giorgione’s activity and towards the end his style is known to us and the technique and spirit of his art are definable’. Proceeding on this assumption, Venturi thence concludes that “however many works Giorgione may have executed of which we are ignorant, they could not rreveal spiritual tendencies or technical skills fundamentally different from those with which we are acquainted. They could not do so, because his artistic activities throughout the decade are known to us and because the revolution he effected is sufficiently prodigious to enable us without proof* to attribute to him the radical transformation of a familiar style’. In view of the confusion that has always attended the problem of Giorgione and il Giorgionismo such a declaration may seem a trifle arbitrary, besides which four years cannot, strictly speaking. be called a decade—but no matter. Let us not pre- judge the issue, since it is. after all, upon the nature and quality of the aforesaid twenty-three works, which in Venturi’s estimation must be accepted, not as possible, but as necessary attributions, that the assessment of Giorgione’s calibre must ultimately depend. Unfortunately, the first commissioned work, a painting for the Sala dell’Udienza in the Doge’s Palace, no longer exists, while of the second, the frescoes for ‘the Fondaco de” Tedeschi only the damaged fragment of a Standing Nude remains. Both the ‘night pieces’, * My italics.

Concerning ‘The Concert’

mentioned by the Mantuan envoy to Venice have likewise disappeared and of the fifteen works listed by Michiel (all, save one, in private collections) nine are lost, two, one only in part, are said to be copies and another is in dispute. To the three remaining works which have survived the Reclining Venus in Dresden, reputed to have been completed by Titian, who painted out the cupid, the Three Philosophers in Vienna, reputed to have been completed by Sebastiano Luciani, and The Tempest* in Venice, the most important of the three, a fourth, or rather a fifth, counting the Standing Nude, must be

added, namely the so-called Laura in Vienna, on the back of which an inscription with Giorgione’s name and the date 1506, was discovered in 1882. These are the authentic works, but there are also the four attributed

pieces included in Venturi’s canon of twenty-three. They are the

Madonna and Child with SS. Francis and Liberale at Castelfranco,

the Judith in Leningrad, the portrait of a Young Man in Berlin and the Self-Portrait in the guise of David with the head of Goliath, which survives only in a Hollar engraving in reverse and a painting, believed to be a copy, in Brunswick, from which the giant’s head is omitted. Since Ridolfit first ascribed it to Giorgione in 1648, the authenticity

of the Castelfranco Madonna has never been questioned. Though extensively restored from 1674 onwards, when the work was undertaken by Pietro della Vecchia, the ‘ape’ of Giorgione, the arguments in support of its acceptance as an original work are more convincing than any that can be advanced against it. The Judith has also been assigned to him, mainly it seems because of its stylistic affinities with the Castelfranco Madonna, but only since 1866 when Mariette’s? findings of 1729 were independently endorsed. But while he and those who have since rejected the former attribution to Raphael may well be warranted in believing it to be by Giorgione, it would still seem somewhat rash to state as categorically as Fomicieva® has done that “it is one of the few authentic works by the artist we possess’, more especially when one considers, not only the lateness of its inclusion in the catalogue of Giorgione’s works, but also the concomitant absence

of documentation in respect of the picture that provides the touchstone, a work unassociated with the artist until one hundred and

thirty-two years after his death. Although both the Castelfranco altarpiece and the Judith may be accepted with reasonable confidence, grave doubts must be cast upon * ‘We should have rejected that, if it had come up before our Hanging Committee’, remarked Sir William Llewellyn, President of the Royal Academy, during the Italian Exhibition in London in 1930.

i) Gy CONT

Chapter IT the third attributed work, the portrait of the Young Man in Berlin. First ascribed to Giorgione in 1884 by J. P. Richter, it has since been almost unanimously accepted as an authentic work and has, in consequence, been extravagantly praised and even signalized as ‘the first modern portrait’, in which, in Fiocco’s words,’ ‘one no longer feels that the sitter emerges as an icon, heroic and devout, but simply as a man, tinged with a certain melancholy’. But supposing that the Berlin portrait could be shown beyond a peradventure to be a late Giorgione rather than an early Titian (which seems much more likely*), would it not, even so, be giving undue

importance to a specific work to say that it itiates rather than that it exemplifies a new and more informal trend in cinquecento portraiture? How much more incautious, therefore, must such an assertion

appear to be when it is made about an undated portrait of an unknown man by a painter whose name is not certainly known. Can it, then, really be said, on the existing evidence,

that Giorgione

introduced a new conception of portraiture into Venetian art? Tradition apart, and the Laura hardly sufficing, nothing now remains to confirm Vasari’s statement® that ‘he far surpassed the Bellini of whom the Venetians thought so much and all the others who had painted in that city up to that time’. Also, what is there now to persuade us that ‘Nature had so richly endowed him that he succeeded wonderfully both in oils and fresco . . . so that many artists of recognized standing admitted that he was born to infuse his figures with spirit and to counterfeit the freshness of living flesh better than any painter not in Venice alone, but everywhere else’? It is true that as far as the oils were concerned Vasari enumerated several, notably portraits, which he himself had seen and admired, but when faced with the famous Fondaco de’Tedeschi frescoes he seems to have been less enthusiastic, since having explained how ‘Giorgione set to work with no other purpose than to make figures at fancy to display his art’, he found himself in all honesty constrained to add, ‘but I cannot discover what they mean . . . nor has anyone been able to tell me’.8 Still earlier evidence to show that much that glitters is only parcel gilt is afforded by the correspondence that passed between Isabella d’Este? and the Mantuan envoy to Venice, Taddeo Albano, shortly after Giorgione’s death. In a letter dated 25th October 1510 she wrote to Albano asking him to make enquiries about a certain ‘night-piece, a singularly beautiful picture’, which she understood remained among the painter’s possessions. Not wishing to proceed precipitately, * The letter bis on the parapet, though not VV, occurs similarly in known works by Titian and is thought to stand for Vecellio. Could VV stand for Vecellio Veneziano?

C oncerning ‘The Concert’

unless there were a risk of losing a good picture in the meantime, she instructed him to obtain expert advice as to its merits and to inform her of the price. In his reply of 7th November Albano wrote advising her that no such picture was available, but that two similar works existed in private collections, neither of which were for sale at any price, both having been commissioned by their owners. He himself had not seen either of them, but from what he had heard he gathered

that ‘one is imperfectly finished and not of a quality that your ladyship would desire, though the other is superior in quality and

better finished’.?

But if paintings by Giorgione were hard to come by in the early sixteenth century, they have become progressively less so during the succeeding years, the number of attributable works discussed by G. M. Richter!° in his exhaustive study of the painter published in 1937, amounting to no less than ninety-nine pieces,* not to mention twenty-six drawings and engravings of lost pictures’. Pignatti,!! on the other hand, in his equally exhaustive study of the subject, allows no more (or no less) than thirty originals, including four drawings, these additional examples having accumulated since the second half of the nineteenth century until relatively recent times. For obvious reasons all attempts to augment the oewvre of a rare master must necessarily appear suspect, but there is undeniably a large and perhaps provoking body of Giorgionesque material, consisting, for the most part, of religious, classical and pastoral scenes in which the appeal of the idyllic landscapes always exceeds that of the often inanimate and sometimes banal single figures and groupings by which they are peopled. In fairness it must be said, however, that there are a few pieces belonging to this category, such as the Trial of Moses and the Judgment of Solomon in Florence and the Sunset Landscape in London that can, with some degree of plausibility, be numbered

among

the probable

works.

There

are,

besides,

the

armoured figures and rustic types with which Giorgione’s name has come to be associated, a context with which, incidentally, the Berlin

portrait patently has little in common. It may be added that one of the more diverting, if less edifying, aspects of the selective process involved in distinguishing the work of one hand from that of another is to be found in the differences and varieties of the opinions expressed and the niceties and naivities of the reasonings employed to support this conclusion rather than that. One cannot but marvel, moreover, at the extraordinary perspicasity of those who in the * ‘Surveying

the whole series of Giorgione’s works’, he wrote, “we are struck by the

rapid colton of the great creative power of the master.’ (sic)

Chapter II handling of minute figures in the middle distance are able to detect ‘the intervention of a Ferrarese hand.

As arule one is rather at a loss to understand why it is that those who are most anxious to enhance Giorgione’s reputation should imagine that the majority of the works they commonly assign to him are in any way calculated to serve this purpose. One can understand, however, that it is an entirely different matter when it comes to the attribution of a picture of the quality of The Concert, one of the great masterpieces of the world. But something more than a mere partiality for Giorgione is needed to sustain the previous and debatable ascription, more particularly as even those who are keenest to do so have had considerable reservations in so doing. ‘It is no wonder that Giorgione should have been placed by his contemporaries in the ranks of the very best painters after exhibiting pictures of such power as The Concert’, wrote

Crowe

and Cavalcaselle,!?

though evidently with

some misgiving, as they hastened to add in all conscience, ‘but it is unfortunately true that none of the canvases and panels that bear his name are at all comparable with The Concert’.

In 1913 Lionello Venturi!® declared himself in favour of its attribution to Titian, albeit not without reluctance and a lingering

nostalgia for Giorgione, as witness what must surely be accounted one of the most oblique, not to say equivocal, essays in attribution ever devised. ‘If a dramatic work by Giorgione should ever be proved to exist (and I do not think it ever will)’, he wrote, ‘then of all pictures The Concert would by right be his’. In the end, however, the new

attribution proved to be more than Venturi could stomach and after thirty years he reverted to his first love and restored the painting to Giorgione on the pretext that ‘one had not sufficiently considered the possibility of stylistic developments in Giorgione’s work during the last years of his life and had not perceived that if the spirituality of the central figure goes beyond anything we know of Giorgione’s, it exceeds Titian’s capacity altogether’. On this basis and without more ado he then proceeded to add a further gloss to the effect that‘i painting it Giorgione raised his need to contemplate and to dream toa height that may indeed be called dramatic and was so immersed in it that he was unable to finish the lateral figures’. By this ttme Venturi had therefore either tacitly withdrawn his former contention that ‘Giorgione never realized his dreams in a dramatic form’, or perhaps, more conveniently, had forgotten it.

% 10

%

%

%

%

Concerning ‘The Concert’

It was Giovanni Morelli!* who in 1893 first questioned Giorgione’s authorship of The Concert, though not apparently on other than purely stylistic grounds. That is to say, he did not suggest that it was a work in any way beyond Giorgione’s capacity, since in his view ‘no other artist ever succeeds in enthralling our imagination so powerfully, yet with such simple means’. ‘In his landscape backgrounds’, he continues, ‘in the charm of his lines and of his colouring few have

equalled Giorgione and none, except perhaps Titian, have ever surpassed him’. Indeed, such was Morelli’s admiration for Giorgione that he went so far as to say that ‘Giorgione is an artist with whom every student should hold daily intercourse in order by degrees to gain a more intimate knowledge of the forms and of the feeling of this most refined of all Venetian painters’. Fortunately for Morelli, one may think, he was not required to provide the means whereby every student could hold daily intercourse with a master, the fewness of whose works constitutes one of his principal claims to immortality. At the same time Morelli’s list of sixteen acceptable attributions must be reckoned a not ungenerous allowance. Morelli’s chosen method of determining the authorship of a picture, and one which he tended to apply ad nauseam, was the study of the manner in which a painter treated the hands and the ears of a sitter, a test to which he did not fail to submit The Concert, saying that ‘it has unfortunately been so much damaged by a restorer that little enough remains of the original, yet from the form of the hands and of the ears and from the gestures of the figures we are led to infer that it is not the work of Giorgione, but belongs to a somewhat later date. If the repaint covering the surface were removed, we should, | think, find

that it is an early work of Titian’s.’ These arguments, tentatively advanced in favour of Titian, neither are nor were intended to be

conclusive, but they were sufficient to place the original ascription in doubt and to initiate a controversy that eighty odd years have not sufficed to resolve to everyone’s satisfaction. Few will deny the value of an intuitive assessment of a picture, but be the endowments of the beholder what they may, a subjective evaluation needs to be substantiated by specific evidence of a formal kind, particularly when a highly controversial issue is involved. Yet while a more plausible case can undoubtedly be made out in defence of Titian’s authorship, a detailed analysis of comparative material in terms of style and technique has seldom been undertaken. As a rule the problem is discussed only on the most general lines, while the examples chosen for comparison sometimes seem oddly adapted to the purpose. Adolfo Venturi,!> whose ability to recreate a picture in words is one

7

Chapter IT 10 11

of the outstanding merits of his presentation, cites two paintings to justify his ascription of The Concert to Titian, namely the Madonna and Child with SS. Stephen, Jerome and Maurice, in the Louvre, and

the Madonna and Child with Saints, variously identified as SS. Ulphus and Brigid or as SS. George and Dorothy, in the Prado. In these Sacre Conversaziont, as they are called, he discerned the

same ‘freedom of brushwork’, the same ‘sharpness of contrast in light and shade’ and the same ‘fullness of modelling’ that he found in The Concert. But it was above all ‘the flame of human emotion’ that he saw (or alleged that he saw) in the faces of S. Stephen, S. Ulphus and in the clavicembalo player that led him to attribute the three pictures to the same hand. It may be felt, however, that neither example provides a very reliable criterion, quite apart from the fact that as works of art they belong to a different category. In the first place it is not known whether the painting in the Louvre is a copy of the version in the Kunsthistorisches Museum or vice-versa or whether both may not be copies after a lost original. In the second, it is open to doubt whether the Prado Conversazione is even correctly attributed. Wethey, while commenting on the poorness of the restorations, accepts it as a Titian, but Tietze excludes it altogether. It is also questionable whether there is more than a partial and superficial resemblance in the fervour of expression seen in the three heads. It might even be thought that they provide, on the contrary, more of a contrast than a comparison, a contrast between the pseudo-sanctity of the saints and the genuine rapture of the musician. Although he had no hesitation in ascribing ‘this masterpiece of his Giorgionesque period’ to Titian, Venturi felt bound to admit that in the tension sustained therein between ‘the convulsive hands and the impassioned gaze’ of the player, ‘his eyes dilated by an inward flame’, ‘Titian achieved an effect of synthesis that he never again recaptured’. Suida,!° who likewise attributed The Concert to Titian, expressed himself in similar fashion when he said that ‘the whole picture is instinct with a monumental power and simplicity that we have not so far found in any other picture by Titian’, yet he did not on that account deem it necessary to adduce any further arguments in support of a conclusion which he apparently thought self-evident. Similarly, Longhi!’ accepted both The Concert in the Pitti and The Concert in the Louvre as being incontestably examples of Titian’s oeuvre.

With this uncritical acceptance of both pictures Tietze,!® on the other

hand,

was

by no

means

satisfied,

since,

as he said, ‘the

reproduction of the two pictures in Suida’s book on Titian—together with the claim that they were both painted by Titian at about the

i2

Concerning ‘The Concert’

same time—seems to me the most conclusive evidence that they have nothing in common but the similarity of the name and their Venetian origin’. But while he himself was inclined on the whole to agree with the conventional attribution of the former, though (unaccountably) not of the latter, he was too much of a scholar to dogmatize and added

accordingly, that ‘the elimination of the Louvre Concert from Titian’s oeuvre . . . is a simpler matter than proving that the attribution to him of the Pitti Concert is correct’. Apart from the fact that he had certain reservations about the authorship of the left-hand figure, owing to the poorness of its quality

in comparison with the other two, Pallucchini!? had no doubt that the

picture is by Titian. For although he regarded the theme of the work and the psychological moment of its realization as typically Giorgionesque, he remained convinced that ‘the construction of the features

modelled

in full light, the white flash of the neck-band,

achieved with a single firm brush-stroke and the nervousness of the hands are strictly Titianesque in character’. Although some scholars, among whom Paola Della Pergola2? may be mentioned,

have

been

more

anxious

to establish

Giorgione’s

authorship than to dispute Titian’s, others, notably Berenson,?! have adopted the happy expedient of assuming the painting to be a composite work, executed in part by Giorgione, in part by Titian. In neither case, however, have they been at pains to examine the proposition in any great detail. A final conclusion as to the painter has, therefore, never been reached and as between Giorgione and

Titian opinion remains divided, and is perhaps best summed up by Fiocco?2 when he posed the question as to ‘whether there is not an inwardness in the gaze of the clavicembalo player, with his marvellous hands, that we shall not find except in Giorgione?’ and by

Zampetti2? when he inadvertently answered it by saying that ‘the intense humanity emanating from the face of the clavicembalo

player—a face imbued with dramatic spirituality—seems beyond the limits of Giorgionesque art . . . and to turn towards a world nearer to that of Titian’. Thus it seems that for all the ardour shown by the exponents of both schools of thought, one is still left with the inescapable impression that whatever their conclusions no one is entirely satisfied. Yet even so, by what inexorable law of the Medes and Persians we are limited to a choice between Giorgione and Titian to the exclusion of any other painter, none of the advocates whose theses have so far been discussed has deigned to tell us. *

*

*

*

*

13

Chapter IT For reasons that may not be immediately obvious, the few scholars who have proposed the name of Sebastiano Luciani, or Sebastiano del Piombo, as he was afterwards called, the only other considerable

painter who has ever been mentioned in connection with The Concert, have been less inclined to dogmatize and at greater pains to argue their case. E. Tietze-Conrat,2+ for instance, who had long believed in

Sebastiano’s participation, explained her reasons for so thinking when in 1946 she wrote as follows. ‘In my opinion, not Titian, but Sebastiano brought Giorgione’s Concert to completion. For me the greater pathos and, above all, the hands of the organ player were decisive evidence of Sebastiano’s authorship. There is in these hands a mannerism stemming from the very bones and incompatible with Titian; it is, on the other hand, a keynote of Sebastiano’s disposition,

a pictorial legacy that enabled him to make his way in Rome and in the school of Michelangelo, in spite of his Venetian origin and his apprenticeship with Giorgione’. One may regret that the context in which this passage occurs did not lend itself to a more detailed analysis, since apart from the interest of a fuller discussion, one would like to know on what grounds Tietze-Conrat inclined to the view that the masterpiece originated with Giorgione. The argument is none the less important, especially when taken in conjunction with the more extensive investigation of the problem that had already been under-

taken by Max Friedeberg,?° who published his findings in 1917.

Unlike the majority of those who have concerned themselves with the matter, Friedeberg began with the picture itself and not with the oeuvre of a pre-selected painter to whom it might, or might not be plausibly ascribed. He had, accordingly, no bias in favour of Giorgione,

on the one hand, or of Titian on the other, both of

whom he finally rejected for several reasons. Even today there are some writers, of whom H. E. Wethey2° may be mentioned, who are still inclined to assign The Concert to the category of those pictures, illustrative of abstract themes, such as ‘Music’, ‘The Three Ages of Man’, ‘The Triumph of the Spinet over the Lute’, which were popular during the early sixteenth century, subject pictures for which appropriate models were used, but whose likenesses neither belonged nor purported to belong to the category of portraiture. For interpretations of this kind Friedeberg had no use, being convinced that we are here looking at the portraits of three distinct personalities, who bear no resemblance to the conventional Venetian types of the period. Nor was he any less emphatic in maintaining that, in regard both to the structure of the head and

general bearing, the principal figure differs radically from what we find in portraits by either Giorgione or Titian. In particular, he found

14

Concerning ‘The Concert’

the work lacking not only in the distinctive merits, but also in the characteristic failings with which we are familiar in Titian’s art. ‘A certam endearing awkwardness in the grouping of the figures, the positioning of the three heads on a horizontal line, the emphasis on the facial expression of the clavicembalo-player, the keen glance and psychological moment so strongly stressed in the picture are all out of keeping with the style and feeling of Titian, whose works are invariably conceived from the standpoint of artistic feeling’. Now it was precisely those features of the work, in addition to the modelling of the head, the treatment of the hands and the unusual accentuation

of the whites of the eyes, which he held to be too individualized and too dramatic for Titian, that Friedeberg associated pre-eminently with Sebastiano. Having postulated Sebastiano’s authorship, he then had no hesitation in identifying The Concert with Sebastiano’s ‘lost’ portrait of the French musician, Verdelot, and his ‘fellow-singer’ Obrecht, an early work mentioned by Vasari,?’ not in the first, but in the second edition

of his Lives of the Painters. It is true, as Friedeberg readily conceded, that Vasari makes no mention of the inclusion of a third figure, but this, in his view, did not invalidate his thesis, because Vasari

frequently described pictures only in part. The same identification was made independently and at about the same time by Josef von Poppelreuter, a writer whose interest in the picture centred, however, in its musico-historical implications. Both critics identify the principal figure as Verdelot and the young man in the feathered hat as a singer, but they differ in their identification of Obrecht, Poppelreuter supposing him to be the elder and Freideberg the younger man, though in what sense the latter could be described as Verdelot’s ‘fellow-singer’, if the one, as Freideberg assumes,

was

in orders and the other not, he fails to

explain. Perhaps it did not occur to him to do so, owing to the uncertainty that still prevails as to the nature of the garments worn (whether Augustinian, Benedictine, or Dominican) which he discusses at length, but without reaching any conclusion, ‘owing to the extensive over-painting resorted to in earlier restorations, when the characteristic monkish garments may have been painted in’. Louis Hourticq?® is another art historian who, after an exhaustive

consideration of the painting in all its aspects, found himself in no doubt as to whom it should be attributed. “Tradition is in favour of Giorgione’, he wrote, ‘but reason is in favour of Sebastiano’. Its attribution to Titian, as the other alternative, he regarded as unthink-

able, since it is precisely in those respects in which it differs from Titian that the hand of Sebastiano is revealed. As he saw it, the

15

Chapter II compositional faults, such, for example, as the level line of the heads,

although only one of the three figures is seated, are characteristic of Sebastiano not Titian; the palette in respect both to colouring and tonality is Sebastiano’s, not Titian’s; the juxtaposition of the warm flesh tints and the green shadows is a predominant feature of the art of the former, not of the latter, who just because he was less spontaneous and less robust in approach attained a greater elevation in portraiture, though what he gained in idealization by eliminating the crudities of nature, he lost in immediacy, so that his figures “never have the appearance of being a lively transcription of reality, as they do in this triple portrait, which, for all its shortcomings, conveys the assurance of being an improvisation from life’. There is no doubt that Hourticg argues his case persuasively and up to a point with commendable thoroughness. Like Friedeberg, he, too, remarks on the difficulty implicit in the fact that Vasari mentions only two and not three sitters, but this he countered by saying that ‘Vasari is not describing the picture; he merely cites the names of personages painted by Sebastiano and cites only those he can name’. Again like Friedeberg, he identifies the young man as Obrecht, there being no reason why he should have known the name of ‘the priest of S. Marco, the third figure in rochet and cape who holds a lute’ (sic). The feathered hat in the Bolognese style, he noted as being of a type particularly affected by musicians, but with the notion that the garment worn by the clavicembalo-player is that of a monk he would have nothing to do. There is, he insisted, no indication of a tonsure,

while the robe with the furred sleeves is that which was commonly worn by laymen at that time. He dated the painting 1508/10, but when it came to those phases of its history which might seem to contradict his thesis he was less reliable, not so much because he preferred his own interpretation, but because he persisted in treating an hypothesis as a proven fact. *

*

*

*

*

To claim that The Concert is Sebastiano’s long lost Portrait of Verdelot and Obrecht is certainly to propound, but unfortunately not to verify, an interesting theory, since in this case something more than stylistic evidence is needed to confirm it. To make definitive statements about the identity of sitters without reference to the historical records at one’s disposal, is not only arbitrary, but almost sufficient to invalidate a theory from the outset.

As it happens, much less is known about the life of Verdelot2° than

16

Concerning ‘The Concert’

about his music. This is largely because he was rare among the eminent composers of his period in having held, as far as we know, but one official appointment and that only for a comparatively short time. Of French, and not, as is sometimes stated, of

Flemish origin, he

appears to have belonged to the Champagne country, the name Verdelot,* by which he came to be known, being that of a commune

in the Seine-et-Marne region. His real name, under which two of his

motets were printed in Paris by the French publisher, Attignant in 1529, was Philippe Delouges, a name common during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in the old Comte Venaissin district, which

now forms part of the modern department of Vaucluse, to which the family is thought to have moved in Verdelot’s youth. Colour is lent to this supposition by the familiar nature of a reference to Carpentras put into his mouth by Antonfrancesco Doni?° in J Marmi, an Italian dialogue in which Verdelot figures as one of the speakers. For it was in Italy, not

in France

that Verdelot

first became

known,

though

Bragard, the most eminent authority on the subject, denies the generally accepted theory that he went first to Venice and only afterwards to Florence. She advances no arguments in support of this contention,

however,

which

would

seem

on the face of it to be

improbable and is contrary to what we are specifically told by Vasari in his life of Sebastiano when he said that ‘Among other portraits, he did that of Verdelot, the most excellent

French musician, who was

then Maestro di Cappella at S. Marco, and in the same picture that of Ubretto, his fellow-singer’. It is true that Vasari was mistaken in so

far as he assumed that Verdelot had ever been Maestro di Cappella at S. Marco, but that does not invalidate his statement that Sebastiano

painted the composer’s portrait at the time that he was a member of the choir at the Basilica, when the then Maestro was Pietro da Fossis, who held office from 1491 until his death in 1527, when he was

succeeded by the great Flemish composer, Adriano Willaert. Indeed, at that stage of his career Verdelot could only have been one of the many ‘excellent musicians who began their musical careers as semplict cantori in this Chapel and afterwards as independent masters to the princely chapels of Italy and of Europe likewise’. In this connection Caffi?! then went on to say, ‘and above all, I will cite Verdelot,

whom

Vasari, in his Lives of the Painters

erroneously

described as Maestro di Cappella to the Serenissima Signoria di * Two fifteenth century minstrels, Jehan Boisart and his son, also called Jehan, and two mid sixteenth century musicians, Jean Torret and Gilles de May, were also

known as Verdelot, but Philippe ee Histoire de la Musique de la Cour de

is much the most famous. (Jeanne Marix: Borgogne 1420-1407, ee P 116 and E.

Van den Straeten: bis Musiciens Néerlandais en Italie 1882, p. 322.

17

Chapter I Venezia, who passed instead to Florence’. On the other hand, we are

unreliably informed by

Naumann*? that ‘Verdelot’s name appears on

the roll of choristers at St. Mark’s—unreliable, not because his name is not to be found, but because no such roll is to be found either, for

the simple reason that, unlike those of the organists, the names of the cantori at the Basilica were never recorded.*? How long Verdelot remained in Venice we have no means of knowing, but we do know that on 1st July 1523 he succeeded Giovanni Serraglio as Maestro di Cappella at the Baptistry of S. Giovanni

in Florence.

For reasons

of which we are ignorant, but

which may perhaps be conjectured, he relinquished this appointment two years later, on 10th August 1525, though without severing his connection with the choir, of which he remained a member until 21st

June 1527, when it was disbanded by the Arte di Calimala (the Guild responsible for the administration of S. Giovanni) in order that they might devote their financial resources to the relief of the victims of the plague,* which was then raging in the city. In consequence, Verdelot and his fellow-singers, who are also named in the relevant document,

were constrained to seek service at the Duomo, where they sang for the first time on 28th June of the same year. This is the last specific record we have of him, so that when he left Florence, where he went

and what became of him can only be surmised. There are, however, certain indirect sources

of information,

on the basis of which his

movements may be reconstructed with some degree of plausibility. It appears that from the outset Verdelot had sought permission to exercise his talents beyond the confines of Florence, and it may be that he resigned his office at the Baptistry in order to enjoy a greater freedom of movement and also perhaps that he might devote more time to the composition of secular as well as religious music, such, for instance, as the setting for the Prologue to Machiavelli’s comedy, Clizia, which was performed in Florence in the year of his resignation. But there may have been other and more compelling reasons, which must not be overlooked. On 19th November 1523, shortly after Verdelot’s appointment as Maestro di Cappella at the Baptistry, Cardinal Giulio de’Medici was elected Pope and assumed the name Clement VII. Almost immediately upon his elevation he expressed the desire to hear the Maestro, who obtained leave from the Arte di Calimala to visit Rome at the turn of *The

plague raged for over a year, during which time the Compagnia

della

Misericordia spent 62,000 scudi for the renee or the sick and needy, without which

many more would have died. (Agostino Lapini: Diario Fiorentino. Ed. G. O. Corazzi. 1900. p. 95.)

18

Concerning ‘The Concert’

the year. This he did, accompanied by a fellow-singer, presumably of Flemish origin named Grisovon, and by one of his pupils known as Francesco fiorentino. He sang before the Pope sometime before 16th January, when he received a gratuity of 25 ducats and his companions 10 ducats each as a reward for their services.3+ Now may not another indication of Medici patronage be discerned in the fact that on 16th August, a week after his resignation as

Maestro di Cappella in 1525, Verdelot was assigned a house near the Medici Palace? This may or may not have been fortuitous, but it seems not unlikely that, just as one of his predecessors, Heinrich Isaac, had been responsible for the musical education of the children of Lorenzo the Magnificent, so Verdelot may have been invited to complete that of the two young Medici boys, the brutish Alessandro and the gifted Ippolito, who under the tutelage of the Pope’s deputy, Silvio Passerini, Bishop of Cortona, represented the ruling house in Florence at that time. Whatever the facts of the situation may have been, it is highly improbable that Verdelot remained in Florence after the middle of 1527, when all cultural activities were necessarily curtailed, owing to

the continued ravages of the plague and to the political turmoil that ensued after the deposition of the Medici and the re-establishment of the ancient Republican regime, which followed the terrible sack of Rome in the spring of that year. During this period of strife and disruption in Italy it seems more than likely that Verdelot returned temporarily to France, where certain of his compositions were published, first in Paris by Pierre Attignant in 1529, as already mentioned, and then in Lyon by

Jacques Moderne in 1532.%° In any event, there is a strong presumption, according to Bragard, that he was again resident in Italy, this

time in Rome, during the closing years of Clement’s pontificate. This we may assume to have been the case, if we may judge from the existence in manuscript of four motets in the Sistine Chapel archives and no less than twenty, several of them in praise of the Medici, in the

Biblioteca Vallicelliana. Beyond this the rest is silence. He may afterwards have gone to Venice, where from 1535 onwards the rival publishers, Antonio Gardano and Girolamo Scotto, enjoyed a monopoly in the printing of his compositions, but in view of Venetian pre-eminence in the field of printed music, this may be indicative of no more than an Italian rather than a French residence. Until such time as further researches can be undertaken, it remains

to be seen whether Bragard is justified in her theory that Verdelot later returned to Florence under the patronage of Duke Cosimo I. He was certainly not there when his friend Pierfrancesco Giambullari,

19

Chapter IT a canon of S. Lorenzo and the first librarian of the Biblhoteca Laurenziana, spoke so eloquently of his musical accomplishments, at one of the meetings of the Accademia Fiorentina. which was founded in 1541. But as no precise date can be given to the meeting in question. which may have been held, according to Alfred Einstein, in 1545, but in any case before 1555, the year of Giambullari’s death, we are not much advanced. Although it was not until 1567 that the proceedings of the Society were ‘published under the ttle, Ragionamenti Accademict,* they may, in all important respects. be accepted as accurate accounts of the discussions that took place. being edited, as they were, by Cosimo Bartoli,°® Provost of S. Giovanni,} who had been a founder member of the group. The theme of the third Ragionamento, in which Pierfrancesco Giambullari, Piero da Ricasoli and Lorenzo Antinori were the speakers, was principally concerned with the Pythagorean theory of harmony. which may be epitomized in the dictum, ‘Music rules the world’. Reference haviing been made to “those days when Verdelot was in Florence’,

Giambullari

went

on to mention

various musicians.

including Adriano Willaert, “whose compositions are much praised in Italy and beyond’, whom he had known in Venice and Costanzo Festa, whom he had known in Rome. He then proceeded to speak with even greater approbation of Verdelot, saying, “As you already know, here in Florence Verdelot was a very great friend of mine, of whose work, were it not for the friendship that existed between us, | would venture to say that there were, as in truth there are, an infinite number of his compositions that even today are a cause of wonder to the most judicious musicians of our time. This is because they are grave, gay, graceful, yearning. fast, slow. tender, harsh or fugato, according to the requirement of the words for which he set himself to compose the music. And I have heard it said by many of those who understand these matters that since the time of Josquin¢ until today there has been no one who understood the true mode of composition better than he’. These are words of high commendation, yet had Giambullari been able to foresee the estimation in which Verdelot. ‘the father of the madrigal’ would be held by future generations, he * The Accademia Fiorentina was a learned society founded in 1541 as a successor to the short-lived Accademia degli Umidt, the first meeting of which was held on 14th November 1540. (ey lender Michele: Storia delle Accademie d'Italia. Bologna,

1929/30. II, p. 1

tie. The Baptistry. + Josquin des Prés c. 1440-1521. One of the greatest musicians of the Netherland school, he was considered to be ‘the most learned, able and sensitive contrapuntist of the fifteeth century.’ He was in the Pope’s service from 1486 to 1499.

20

Concerning “The Concert’ might have been less anxious to apologize for the eulogistic terms in which he spoke of his friend, At a time when ‘music was still in the service Of poetry’, a sensitive appreciation of the words to be set was of paramount importance and it 1s therefore the more noteworthy that in Kinstein’s?” opinion ‘Verdelot’s genuine works can be recognized by their simplicity and by the way in which their music adapts itself to the text’, He is, moreover, in no doubt that ‘only when his entire work has been scored shall we be able to estimate the importance,

originality and versatility of Verdelot, the most prolific master of the first great period of the madrigal’. His last work, a collection of motets, entitled Llectiones diversorum

motetorum was published by Gardano in 1549 and his last mass, Philomena by Scotto in 1544, yet while the madrigals, for which he was chiefly famous, were continually reprinted with supplementary material from 1536 onwards, no new additions were included after

1542. Whether or not these publication dates have any significance in relation to his personal life is problematical; all that we know for

certain is that his death occurred sometime before 1552, the year in which Ortenzio Lando*® published his Sette libri de Cathaloghi, in which he spoke of Verdelot as being rare araong the musicians of his time. The actual words used—Verdelotto, francese, fu in suoi giornt raro—suggest that he had been dead for some time, in which case, if we assume that he died in 1549 or thereabouts and that the Missa

Philomena, the second of his only two Masses, was his last religious composition, we shall probably be as near right as makes no matter. The question that now remains to be decided is not whether the principal sitter in The Concert is or 1s not Verdelot, but whether it could be, to which question the answer would appear to be in the

affirmative, if we assign the painting, as we must, to a date not later than 1510, the year in which Sebastiano left Venice to settle in Rome. The portrait is of a man of the appropriate age, who, contrary to what has frequently been asserted, is not a monk. Hourticg denied it for the reasons cited above, while Rosita Levi Pisetzky,* the eminent authority on Italian costume, is of the same opinion, though, unlike Hourticq, she takes the garment he wears to be that of an ecclesiastic

rather than of a layman. In more specific terms, what he is wearing, or appears to be wearing, since owing to the still somewhat impaired state of the picture one

cannot

be sure, 1s a form

of the cappa

choralis,®9 that is to say, an ample closed, or partly closed, black robe, sometimes lined with fur and originally proper to cantort, but later

* An opinion expressed not in her stupendous Storia del Costume in Italia, but in a

private letter to me.

Pag|

Chapter II adapted to the use of other ecclesiastical ranks. It was worn not only in the choir, beneath the cotta or superpellictum, but also in public processions as a protection against the cold and the rain, for which reason it had a small hood attached. But its wearing was neither confined

to clerics nor indicative

of ecclesiastical

status,

for the

sufficient reason that church and cathedral choirs were composed of both clerics and laymen, many of whom were married men, all of whom wore the ecclesiastical garb of their fellow singers, just as they do in Catholic and Anglican choirs today. From surviving records we know, moreover, that the closed, ankle-length, black* robe remained

obligatory for the choristers of S. Marco until the eighteenth century, when the wearing of a short wig, to the exclusion of the bag-wig and tie-wig, was permitted, this alone being deemed suitable for

liturgical?® use. As far as the age and apparel of the sitter is concerned, there is thus no inherent reason why in the enraptured countenance of the clavicembalo-player, described by Venturi*! as ‘the most sublime personification of music and of the emotions it engenders’ we should not discover the features of ‘the most excellent Verdelot’, whose music

was said by his publisher to be ‘the most divine and beautiful ever heard’.t Were this identification to prove correct it would seem strangely apposite, besides serving to confirm the impression that Verdelot somehow emerges as an exceptionally attractive personality notwithstanding the little that is otherwise known about him. He was obviously remembered with pleasure and affection long after he had left Florence, in addition to which it is surely significant that he should have been introduced as one of the speakers in Doni’s J Marmi,*” among such familiar Florentines as Ridolfo Ghirlandaio,

Tribolo, Figiovanni, Norchiati and Niccolé Martelli, particularly as Doni was only fourteen years of age when Verdelot may be assumed to have left Florence in 1527. It is possible that he knew him and cherished the recollection, but it seems more likely that it was from his fellow members of the Accademia Fiorentina, of which he became secretary in 1545, that Doni received the vivid impression he conveyed in his dialogue, that is to say, of a Frenchman wholly Italianized, conversable, simpatico and completely at ease in his Florentine setting. To discover in the features of the clavicembalo-player a portrait of Verdelot, a musician of peculiar sensibility, perhaps also a man of singular charm,

would

not

be lacking in verisimilitude,

but the

* See below re colour. } La piu divina, et pitt bella musica che si udisse giamai. ... (Gardano, 1541.)

ee

Concerning ‘The Concert’

attractiveness of a proposition affords, alas, no guarantee of its validity. Nor, were we to seek an earnest of their accomplishment in the sometimes comic and often formidable countenances of composers of a more recent past, should we find ourselves much encouraged in the enterprise. *

*

*

*

*

Sull further proof that insufficient attention has hitherto been paid to the biographical aspect of the problem by those who have sought to identify the sitters in The Concert is shown by their failure to agree as to which is which. Proceeding on the assumption that the picture is in fact Sebastiano’s ‘lost’ double-portrait, they have been unanimous in supposing the principal figure to be Verdelot—though without adducing any arguments in support of their theory—but are at variance as to whether Obrecht is represented by the young or by the old man. This is not good enough and is scarcely to be excused even at a time when much less was known about the lives of Renaissance musicians than it is today. Jacob Obrecht,#? son of William, sometime city trumpeter of Ghent, and one of the great composers of the Netherland school in the late fifteenth century, was born at Berg-op-Zoom on 22nd November 1453. He studied at Louvain University and having taken orders, celebrated his first mass at Oudenbosch on 23rd April 1480, on which occasion he received not only a gift to mark the event, but also four years’ salary in advance. It was, however, primarily as a musician that Obrecht sought to devote himself to the service of the Church and in 1484 he became écolatre, that is to say, master of the children’s choir school at Cambrai,*+ though only to be dismissed a year later, because of his alleged neglect of the physical well-being of his pupils, whose progress in plain-song, Latin and deportment came more within his purview than the supervision of their games, meals and underwear,

for which he was also responsible. From Cambrai he moved to Bruges, where he became a cantor at the great collegiate church of Saint Donatien* in 1485 and succentor five years later. Yet even before this his reputation as a composer was already established beyond the confines of the Low Countries, since in * Saint Donatien, founded by Arnulf Count of Flanders in 961, stood on the north

side of the Bourg and was the centre of the arene life of Bruges. It’s Provost became the hereditary Chancellor of Flanders. A chapter of secular canons in 1050, it became a cathedral in 1560 and was demolished during the French occupation in 1799.

Chapter IT 1487, at the request of Ercole d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, he was granted six months’ leave of absence to visit the Ferrarese court. The Duke, a

notable patron of the arts and an accomplished musician himself, was well acquainted with Obrecht’s religious music and had, apparently, a great desire to meet him. In any case he took considerable trouble about his reception, if we may judge from the terms of the letter he wrote to his amantissiuma Duchess, Eleanora d’Aragona, on 1st December 1487.*° Writing from Goito, near Mantua, he informed her

that Obrecht had arrived from France and that they would be travelling to Ferrara together. He then proceeded to express his wishes about the preparation of the room that Obrecht was to occupy. ‘Would you see that a satin coverlet is put on his bed’, he wrote, ‘and that the room is provided with its hangings and bench covers and with whatever else may be necessary. And should the window or anything else be broken, have it repaired immediately and let someone be found to wait on him. For the personal provision of this singer we intend to allow expenses for three persons and we wish him to be welcomed with all honour’. Whether these courtesies were peculiar to the occasion, which seems probable, or are merely indicative of the esteem in which singers of Obrecht’s distinction were commonly held we cannot say, but in either case the letter greatly redounds to the credit of the Duke, whose solicitude for the comfort and whose concern for the honour of his guest are as charming as his preoccupation with minor domestic details is unexpected. But the Duke was prepared to do rather more for his chosen composer than to ensure that silk coverlets were put upon his bed, as is borne out by the correspondence* that ensued between himself and his envoy in Rome, Bonfrancesco Arlotti, whom he instructed to do everything he could to obtain for Obrecht the grant of one of the

vacant benefices in Ferrara, since, as he insisted, ‘we desire above all

that this Messer Jacomo should be favoured’. Nothing came of the

negotiations,

however,

largely

because

the

Pope,

Innocent

VIII,

looked with no friendly eye upon the Casa d’Este and was not to be prevailed upon by a prince who, under the circumstances may well have been too importunate. By the following August Obrecht was back in Bruges, where he remained until January 1491, when he was invited to deputize for Jean Barbireau, maitre de chapelle at the cathedral of Notre Dame in Antwerp, who had been taken ill. Barbareau did not recover and when he died six months later Obrecht was appointed in his stead. Unfortunately, Obrecht himself suffered a severe break-down in health five years later and in 1496 was obliged to relinquish the

Concerning ‘The Concert’

appointment. Having done so he went first to his old home in Berg-op-Zoom to recuperate and afterwards to Bruges, where at the end of 1489 he resumed office as succentor at Saint Donatien. But two years later his health again broke down and he found himself with no option but to tender his final resignation, which was formally accepted, albeit with reluctance, at a meeting of the Chapter held on 3rd September 1500. Six weeks later he was granted various benefices as a reward for his services and in recognition of his fame as a musician. He was also granted the recently vacant chaplaincy of Sainte-Croix and a stall, with the usual privileges attaching to it, at Saint Donatien, besides being raised to the higher ranks of the clergy as titular Provost of the collegiate church of Saint Pierre, Thourout.*’

His movements during the next three years are unrecorded, but by June 1501 he was sufficiently recovered to be able to return briefly to Antwerp and then in 1504 to take his departure for Italy, there to re-enter the service of his former patron, the Duke of Ferrara. By this time Ercole d’Este was an old man and in declining health, but during the intervening seventeen years he had never lost interest in either Obrecht or his music. Happily, in the summer of that year his infirmities were not such as to prevent him from going first on a pleasure trip to Mantua and then on a pilgrimage to Florence, in fulfilment of a vow, to visit the shrine of the Santissima Annunziata.*®

This was in July, by which time Obrecht had already arrived in Italy, as we know from the Ferrarese accounts for the year ending December 1504, in which he 1s referred to as Messer Ubreto Compositore, that he had been in receipt of a regular salary for five months.*? Now it is at this point that several inter-related questions present themselves. Did Obrecht meet the Duke at Mantua, as before? Did he

travel with him to Florence? And was it on this occasion that the musician, Pietro Aaron, made his acquaintance? No positive answer can be given to any of these questions, but the enquiry is relevant, since it was in Florence that Aaron claims to have known him.°? On the face of it the claim would appear to be somewhat extravagant, but if there is any truth in it, then only at this juncture could the meeting have taken place. It cannot have been earlier, quite apart from what we already know of Obrecht’s movements, simply because even at this time Aaron was only fifteen years of age; it cannot have been later, because Obrecht himself, though he outlived his patron by several months, did not long survive.

Apparently, this last votive journey proved to be too much for the ageing Duke, whose health continued to deteriorate on his return to

Ferrara, where he died on 25th January 1505, with the music of the

clavicembalo sounding in his ears.°! 25

Chapter IT In what way, if at all, Obrecht’s position at the Ferrarese court was affected by the death of his patron we do not know. All that can be said is that there are no records, or at least no surviving records, to

show that he was in receipt of payments for his services after 1504. We can, however, be reasonably sure that if he ceased to be a member of the ducal choir, it was rather at his own wish than for the want of

any goodwill on the part of the new Duke, Alfonso I, who, like his father, was a keen patron of music and the arts, besides being an accomplished performer on the viol himself. In any case Obrecht continued to reside in Ferrara for the remaining months of his life. The exact date of his death is not recorded, but he died of the plague sometime between the beginning of June and the end of August 1505. Mention of his death is made in a later record, concerning six silver cups and a gilt comfit-jar belonging to him, which were inherited by the fever hospital, // Boschetto degli ammorbati, where he died.* The entry, in which he is referred to as quondam M. Jacomo Obrecht gia cantore dello illust. S. Duca concludes with an unexpected addendum, to the effect that he was a singer known to them since 1484. As Obrecht is known to have been in Cambrai in that year and not in Ferrara, this must either be a slip for 1487 or must refer to another matter connected with him. It appears that in 1484 Duke Ercole had been in correspondence with Antonio Montecatino, his envoy in Florence, about the acquisition of a mass by Obrecht, which he had been at pains to acquire from Obrecht’s fellow countryman, Cornelio

Laurenti, a singer who had formerly been in the Duke’s service.°”

All things considered it is highly probable that it was at this time, while he was still living in Ferrara, that Obrecht visited Venice, where his masses had been sought after and performed during the preceding decade, and where his reputation was such that two of his secular songs had been included in the first book of printed music published in 1501} by Ottaviano Petrucci, who continued to print his composi-

tions during the succeeding years. If we may proceed on this assumption, then he may have travelled with Duke Alfonso, probably on the second of the two occasions on which he visited Venice during the year of his accession. The first visit took place in February, when he went informally to pay his respects to the Signoria and to negotiate for supplies to meet the threatened * His emis was composed by eeipers Sardi of the Palatine Library, Modena, as follows: Musicus hoc Hobrecht doctus nullique secondus/Arte vel ingenio sarchophago tegitur. A.D. 1505 die treyesimo August. + The Harmonice Musices Odhecaton [A] was reprinted in 1504, when five of his Masses were also published by Petrucci. (Reece: Music in the Renaissance. London,

1954, p. 192.)

26

Concerning ‘The Concert’

famine in his domain. The second visit occurred in May when he went on a state visit?? with an entourage, in which, as was customary, his maestro di cappella, singers and instrumentalists would almost certainly have been included. For had not his father on a similar occasion in 1472 been accompanied by a retinue of 600 persons, all of whom had been entertained for five days at the expense of the

Serenissima?°*

Although it is unthinkable that Obrecht should not have visited Venice during his last sojourn in Italy, there is no proof that he did so, apart from Vasari’s specific statement that Sebastiano Viniziano painted his portrait and that of his fellow singer, Verdelot, nel

medissimo quadro while he was there.°°

This brings us to the pertinent question, not as to whether the elderly priest portrayed in The Concert is or is not Obrecht, but whether he could be, to which, as in the case of Verdelot, the answer

would again appear to be in the affirmative, in which case the date of the painting would be 1505. The man represented 1s of the right age,

a man, that is to say, in his early fifties or thereabouts, and, judging by his garb, a cleric of the appropriate status. He wears canonical dress*—a white soutane beneath the rochet and a black choir cape—to which, as a canon of Saint Donatien and titular Provost of Saint Pierre, Thourout, Obrecht would have been entitled. *

*

*

*

*

We now come to the perplexing presence of the third figure, who differs in all respects from his companions. He is a layman; he is younger than they are; he holds no communication with them and he neither grasps nor plays an instrument. He is, in addition, artistically inferior and compositionally intrusive. What, then, is the relevance of this third figure? Who was he and

why and when was he introduced into a composition from which he appears to be so singularly detached? These are pertinent questions, but as the Mad Hatter found to his discomforture, it is easier to ask

riddles than to answer them. Only one attempt has so far been made to identify him, but not, one may think, with conspicuous success, when it is learned that he was * The ecclesiastical dress here worn is exactly the same as that in which the Augustinian canon, Jean Ruysbroeck, l’Admirable (1293-1381) is depicted in a sixteenth

century

miniature.

(See E. De Moreau,

5S. J.: Histoire de lEglise en

Belgique. Brussels, 1945. Ill, Pl. XXXII.)

Pa

Chapter IT first said to be a lady and was afterwards named as Catherine von Bora, the runaway Cistercian nun, who in 1515 became the spouse of the erstwhile Augustinian canon, Martin Luther. For a middle-aged Hausfrau the garments must surely have seemed a trifle bizarre, but apparently not so, as an identification of her companions as Calvin and Luther had proved acceptable. This inspired suggestion,” first made in an inventory of the Guardaroba of Cosimo III, Grand Duke of Tuscany, in 1697 persisted until the early nineteenth century, but was wisely rejected by the French, when the picture, together with other loot, was exhibited in Paris, having been carried off by that

Corsican upstart, Napoleon Bonaparte.°® In all likelihood the identity of the young anonimo will always remain a matter of speculation, since it cannot be said for certain whether he formed an integral part of the composition from the outset, whether he was included as an after-thought by the original painter or was perhaps added or altered by some other hand at a later date. For the purposes of the present argument let us assume that he was included by the original painter either at an early or later stage of the work and that he was by profession a singer, as has sometimes been proposed, since, being, as he is, a subsidiary figure, he cannot be either a prince or a nobleman. He may, of course, have been a pupil of one or other of the two men portrayed, but whereas they belonged, we may suppose, to the learned class of musicians,®’ known as the cantori a libro, he belonged more probably to the class of dilettanti known

as cantori

a liuto or cantori alla lira, who,

unlike

their

predecessors, the troubadours, no longer composed their own songs, but set the poems of others to music, among which the sonnets and trionfi of Petrarch were popular, as well as the frottole and madrigali, which were performed increasingly during the sixteenth century. Throughout this period the cantori a liuto, of whom the falsetti were the most highly paid, were much in demand in the courts of Italy and elsewhere in Europe, where they appear to have been not only cosseted by their patrons, but elegantly equipped into the bargain. This putative singer might, accordingly, have been a protégé of repute in his own day, but now long since forgotten. It is possible, on the other hand, that he may have been included in the group less for his own sake than to please someone else of greater importance. From a purely speculative point of view (and supposing Sebastiano Luciani to * That this identification could not possibly be correct, if Giorgione were in fact the painter, never seems to have entered into anyone’s calculations throughout the period.

Concerning ‘The Concert’

have been the painter) might he have been Luigi Petrucci, the only

son of Ottaviano dei Petrucci,°® the music publisher, who became famous at the beginning of the cinquecento as the inventor of the method of printing music by means of movable metal type and was responsible for the printing of a number of Obrecht’s compositions? Alternatively, if in fact it is Obrecht who is here portrayed, he may have been no more than a Ferrarese page, introduced into the picture to give it a more decorative appearance. But whoever he may be, the possibility that he may represent an after-thought on the part of the original painter or an addition or alteration by someone else later on is suggested by the narrowing of the sleeve of the vestis taloris worn by the clavicembalist, which shows as a pentimento in the form of a transverse black streak across the saffron doublet worn by the young man. This, however, is a suggestion not for a moment to be entertained by the powers that be, according to whom, far from being the last, this so-called third figure was the first to be painted. The reason given by the Gallery authorities for so thinking is based upon the laboratory analysis, from which it appears that the yellow garment is painted under and not over the black. But does this necessarily preclude the possibility of some degree of re-painting at a slightly later date? Furthermore, while the sharpness of the outline of the vestis taloris on the left-hand side has been especially re-marked, no account has been taken in the official view of the pentimento mentioned above, which is not discussed.* Owing to the precarious nature of picture-cleaning and to the differences of interpretation to which scientific findings are subject, X-ray photographs are notoriously difficult to analyse, besides which, as the late Helmut Ruhemann®? has said, ‘it is most unlikely that a method will ever be found of discriminating unerringly between original paint and later additions’. It is true that some modification of this statement is needed, as, after a lapse of twelve years or so since it was written, it is now possible by a scientific examination of minute particles to distinguish between the paints employed by the older masters

and

impossible to longing to an period. Much out, upon the even so and caution may

those

in use

several

centuries

later, but it is still

discriminate, let alone unerringly, between those beearlier tradition and in general use over a prolonged depends, as Ruhemann himself was at pains to point experience and subjective approach of the restorer, yet technical prowess notwithstanding, some degree of not be misplaced where highly controversial artistic

* Exhibition Catalogue—Tiziano

nelle Gallerie fiorentine, Palazzo Pitti, Florence,

1978 p. 196 et seq.

Zo

Chapter IT issues are involved. And especially not, inasmuch as Ruhemann, with commendable impartiality, was also of the opinion that ‘in trying to decide whether a given passage is by a certain master himself or by a later hand, purely stylistic criteria . .. can often be more conclusive than technical or scientific ones’. In fact, as he goes on to maintain,

‘they are sometimes no less scientific though they do not belong to the field of chemistry or physics but to that of aesthetics and logic’. But if the superb cleaning and restoration of this hitherto sadly impaired masterpiece (for which the art world in general and Renaissance specialists in particular must be profoundly grateful) has not sufficed to solve the outstanding problems it has always presented, it has confirmed beyond a peradventure the marked inferiority of the handling of the young man. Contrariwise, it has revealed in the old man a countenance, not only in much better condition than could have been hoped or anticipated, but considerably more lively, interesting and highly characterized than had formerly been suspected. Similarly, the features of the principal sitter have been much enhanced. An unexpected outcome of the cleaning is the change in the colour of his robe. Ever since the painting was first mentioned by the art historian, Carlo Ridolfi, in 1648 the vestis taloris has always been

assumed to be, and has appeared to be black, but on close inspection it now appears to be very dark blue. That the colour has had the appearance of being black from the time that the picture was first recorded is attributable in the estimation of the restorers to the damage already supposed to have been wrought by accumulated dust and the effects of time upon a canvas that had been painted only a little over a century before. But is there not another and perhaps a more feasible explanation of the discrepancy? Is it not rather owing to the chemical change that has been taking place in the original pigment during the past four centuries? It is well known that the vegetable blacks are less durable than the bone and metal blacks, which are free from the bluish tinge which characterizes the former. Among these vine black is regarded as one of the most perfect pigments. Initially blue-black in tone, it tends to become appreciably bluer as time goes on. In contrast ivory black, bone black and lamp black, if properly prepared, are less prone to alteration and only incline to brown, if imperfectly burnt to start with. It is therefore possible (though by no means certain) that the clavicembalist’s robe may have been blacker rather than bluer in the mid seventeenth century, supposing vine black to have been the pigment used, though even then it would have differed considerably from the altogether

Concerning ‘The Concert’

blacker and denser tone of the choir cape worn by the priest. And here, in so far as the possible hand of Sebastiano is at issue, it may be recalled that, according to Vasari, he was especially noted for his skilful handling of blacks, whereby he was able to differentiate between the blackness of five or six contrasting textures such as velvet, broadcloth, sarcenet and damask and these as opposed to the blackness of a beard, differences that could, presumably, only have

been obtained by a use of contrasting pigments.

To the immense improvement of the work as a whole, the major decision was taken during the process of restoration to revert to the original dimensions of the canvas by removing the six-inch strip that had been added to the support along the top during the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century when, in common with various other pictures in the collection, The Concert was enlarged to satisfy the requirements of some particular decorative scheme. As the garments worn by the elder men are traditional and therefore belong to no specific period, the only clue we have as to the approximate date of the painting on the face of it is that afforded by the costume worn by the young man, who is portrayed in the style of dress that became fashionable at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The embroidered jerkin or doublet with the wide sleeves and square-cut neck, revealing the black-edged shirt beneath, is typical, but while the shoulder-length hair is also characteristic of the period, the large hat with its abundant plumes is not and cannot be exactly paralleled in other cinquecento portraits. For although feathers were certainly worn at this time, it was not until the end of the century that they were worn at this angle and in this profusion. In some respects the costume as a whole recalls the style of the previous decade, as illustrated in the Ryksmuseum tapestry, woven in celebration of the marriage between Philip the Fair and Joanna of Castile in 1496. It may be said, in short, that to the eye of the costume expert* there is a measure of uncertainty in the treatment of the dress of the youth, which compares unfavourably with the assurance exhibited in the handling of that of the other two sitters. It has been suggested that this tentative approach might have been owing to the painter’s unfamiliarity with a style still in a transitional stage or that he may, alternatively, have been unsure of himself for some other less obvious reason. Again, according to Rosita Levi Pisetzky,} ostrich feathers were * T am indebted to my friend Anthony Powell, the well-known theatrical designer, for this observation. + Again in a private communication to me.

ot

Chapter IT especially associated with festive occasions, such as jousts, balls theatricals and revelries of all kinds, a view that is borne out by the inclusion of ostrich feathers as being among the first listed of the cose fantastiche brought to Ferrara in 1502 in preparation for the marriage between Alfonso d’Este, Duke Ercole’s heir, and the un-

deservedly maligned Lucretia Borgia. Being used, as they were, to provide that extra panache needed for public entertainments, they may, in Signora Levi Pisetsky’s opinion, have also been affected by musicians, whose professional requirements are akin to those of other performers. The secular dress of the young anonimo, which contrasts sharply with the clerical garb of his companions, has always seemed somewhat of an anomaly, but is explained by H. E. Wethey®! in his two-volume work on Titian as being a means of emphasizing “youth’s freedom from the trials of life’, since, though including it among

Titian’s portraits, Wethey does not regard it as being a triple portrait par excellence, but rather as an allegorical picture, the theme of which is “Music, here presented as essential to the life of civilized man from youth to old age’, surely a fanciful, not to say an absurd interpretation of one of the supreme portraits of the world. Yet strangely and unacceptably, one may think, the same view has been advanced by Mercedes Garberi in her contribution to the Catalogue of the Exhibition, Omaggio a Tiziano, which was held in Milan at Palazzo Reale in

1977.* ‘Every attempt at identification has failed’, she wrote, ‘because the subject is clearly symbolic’. *

i

*

*

*

*

When so much remains obscure in a controversy of this kind and so little can be authoritatively established, it is almost in the nature of a new experience to encounter positive, not to say categorical pronouncements made in a different connection and in an unexpected context. For it seems, after all, that the ‘lost’ Portrait of Verdelot and Obrecht survives not in The Concert, as has sometimes been supposed, but in The Three Ages of Man, a work in the Palazzo Pitti. a work that has been variously attributed to Bellini, Giorgione, Lorenzo

Lotto, il Morto da Feltre and others, but not to Sebastiano Viniziano,

to whom, if Einstein®? may be believed, it rightly belongs. Nor, in his opinion, would there ever have been any doubt about it, Lh wrate recording the work, Vasari had not omitted to say that ‘Sebastiano or “peat:

Concerning ‘The Concert’

the unknown painter, had painted his own portrait as a beardless youth in the same picture’. Being less concerned with the problem of the artist than

of the sitters, Einstein

concludes

forthwith

that

‘whoever the painter may be, there can be no doubt about the models’. As to the aforesaid beardless youth, he then goes on to say that ‘he holds a sheet of music in his hand which Verdelot seems to be explaining to him’. On this basis he naturally assumes that the aged and somewhat disagreeable-looking man on the left must be Obrecht.* With equal assurance Einstein recognizes Verdelot once again in the so-called Concert at Hampton Court, accompanied this time by another emiment Netherlands musician, the celebrated composer Adrian Willaert, who is shown as an old man holding a recorder, on the right of the picture. Like the Three Ages of Man, which it resembles in type, this Concert has been ascribed to a number of painters, among whom Einstein favours Lorenzo Luzzo, more commonly known as il Morto da Feltre. These are bold assertions, particularly as one wonders why, in the absence of historical proof, ‘there can be no doubt about the models’. If moreover, the Three Ages of Man is not by Sebastiano, as Einstein is prepared

to allow,

and

to whom,

indeed,

it has never

13

been

attributed, then it cannot be the picture referred to by Vasari—can it? But to whomsoever the picture may be attributed, the supposition that the exceedingly immature youth in the middle could be the painter carries no conviction. Nor is it by any means certain that it is the same man who is depicted in both pictures. The one in the Hampton Court Concert, whether the same or another, appears older

than the one in the Three Ages of Man, as he would be, of course, if

the identifications were correct, since in that case the two pictures would be separated by some twenty years or more, which, on the face of it, seems unlikely. Obrecht, as we have already seen, died in 1505,

while Willaert was not appointed to the office of maestro di cappella at 8. Marco until 1527. This identification would effectually rule out il Morto da Feltre as the painter, to whom by preference Einstein would assign it, because il Morto died at the beginning of the year, at the end of which Willaert settled in Venice. But there is no more reason to suppose that Einstein was right about the identity of the painter than about that of the two musicians, since he adduces no arguments in support of his contentions in either case. All of which merely goes to show that, while it may be that philosophers should not * This error of identification is perpetuated by Gustave Reece (Op. cit. p. 186).)

BD

Chapter II

15 16

be kings, musicologists assuredly should not be critics in arts other than their own. Musical groups of the type discussed above and others such as the group of three women, formerly attributed to Palma Vecchio and described as The Three Sisters, but now assumed to be by an anonymous Venetian; another Concert composed of two men and a girl, once thought to be by Ercole de’Roberti, but now given to Lorenzo Costa; and Bernardo Licinio’s Triple Portrait of an elderly couple, and a girl at the clavicembalo, the authorship of which is not in dispute, may all be said to be examples of the conventional family portrait executed in a musically conscious age, an age in which ‘dilettantism pervaded the middle as well as the upper classes’, and in which, in any description of social intercourse, “music and singing are

always and specifically mentioned’ .®? Though one cannot be sure about the relationship of the three figures in the Three Ages of Man, there can be little doubt about that between those in the Hampton Court Concert, once the strong facial resemblance of the two men to each other and that of the boy to the girl has been observed. Clearly, this is a portrait of three generations, father, son and grandchildren, united in a common musical interest.

17

It may be that one of the two men was a well-known composer or virtuoso of the period, but if so there is nothing whereby he can be identified. Again, the three female musicians are obviously sisters, just as the two men in the Costa Concert are brothers, here depicted, almost certainly with their sister. Licinio’s group portrait, on the other hand, is more difficult to explain. It might be the portrait of a gifted only daughter with her elderly parents, but according to Venturi? it is capable of a more prurient interpretation, owing to the ambiguity of the man’s gesture, the look of disapproval evident in the face of the elder woman and the sense of uncertainty expressed in that of the younger. There are, of course, many musical scenes to be found in cinquecento painting other than those concerned with the amateur pleasures of family life—scenes belonging to the wider context of society and to the world of the virtuost, such as those executed by Niccolé

dell’Abate

towards

the middle

of the century,

scenes

of

singular elegance, gaiety and charm. *

*

*

*

*

To neither of these categories does The Concert in the Palazzo Pitti belong. For here, if anywhere, is a portrait, qua portrait, notably of

Concerning ‘The Concert’

two men (the third being subordinate) who can only have been painted as personalities in their own right. No blood relationship between them is indicated and they could not conceivably have been used as models to convey a meaning or to impart an interest beyond that which they intrinsically possess. They do not portray ‘Music’ as a concomitant of civilized life, as Wethey opined, nor do they represent ‘the victory of the spinet over the lute (sic), as Richter put it, quoting Schubring,® who in his turn makes no attempt to substantiate his theory that Giovanni Spinetti, the reputed inventor of the spinet was an Augustinian monk (sic) and that it is he who is here portrayed at the keyboard in The Concert. But whether Spinetti really gave his name to the spinetta (a view that is now discredited) or whether he took it from the fact that he was a maker of these instruments, which seems more likely, we can at least be sure that he was not an Augustinian. Had he been and had he been here portrayed, then he can only be the Augustinian lutanist, so-called, and not the player at the key-board. There is no doubt, however, that he enclosed his instruments, not in a trapezoidal, but in a quadrilateral casing, as an instrument of this kind, bearing the inscription, Joanes

Spinetus Venetus. Fecit A.D. 1503 was recorded by Adriano Banchieri as being in the possession of the organist, Francesco Stivorio, at Montagnana at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Although spinetta (with its variants, spinettina, spinettone, depending on the size) was the generic name for key-board instruments in Italy, the type with which Spinetti was associated, should not, strictly speaking, be called a spinet, belonging, as it does, to the

earlier class of instruments, known as the virginals, in which the strings run parallel to the key-board, and not, as in the spinet, at an angle to the player in the form described as a ‘couched harp’. It is to this group that the clavicembalo properly belongs. From the little that can be seen of the key-board instrument in The Concert, it now becomes apparent that the name clavicembalo, commonly applied to it, is a misnomer. It is too small to be a variety of the harpsichord, being essentially a portative instrument, such as was often depicted among recorders, lutes and viols by the seventeenthcentury bergamask ritrattista di istrumenti musicalt, Evaristo Baschenis. In common parlance it might be described as a spinettina, but might more correctly be described as an oftavino,* an instrument of

small compass, as its name indicates, mainly used by singers, who needed to provide themselves with some form of accompaniment. *T am grateful to Madeau Stewart for her generous assistance in identifying the instrument.

Bo

Chapter II The assumption that the other half-seen instrument in the picture is a lute* was by no means peculiar to Schubring and Richter. Friedeberg,©’ among others before and since, clearly had no doubt about it, as witness his imagined re-creation of the scene at the time of

19

its painting. Having spoken of Sebastiano’s proclivities as a musician, he continued in this wise. ‘One can well imagine him saying to his musical friends, ‘“‘I want to paint you. Verdelot, you go and sit at the spinet and you [Obrecht], come—take this lute”, while the singer looks calmly ahead, awaiting his cue’. Apart from the unhappy reference to the lute, the reconstruction, which is in itself a tribute to the evocative character of the picture, is vivid enough, but is it altogether convincing? Surely not, and for two reasons. One of the virtues of the composition that has often been remarked is the sense of spontaneity it conveys, a feeling that one is in the presence, not of two men who have been so posed in order to be portrayed, but of two men who have been so portrayed, because they happen to have been observed in an attitude, at once both natural and dramatic, by a painter who chanced to be present and to whom it made an instant appeal. Again, is there not a finality about the pose that implies an end rather than the beginning of a performance? The last chord has been struck; the singer in his odd detachment is silent; and the elder man, who despite the instrument he holds has had apparently no part in the proceedings, expresses his approbation by placing his hand on the shoulder of his companion. Apart from the pleasant gesture of encouragement shown by the elder musician towards the younger, the identification of the two men as Verdelot and Obrecht would seem highly appropriate in this context for another reason. That an Augustinian canon should be portrayed with a stringed instrument in his hand might seem a little arbitrary, were it not perceived to be an indication of his musicianship, which in Obrecht’s case would be the more apposite, inasmuch as the settings of many of his secular songs were undoubtedly instrumental. As to the neture of the instrument in question this has long been in doubt, if not in dispute, mainly because so little of the body can be discerned, owing to the heavy over-painting at the bottom of the canvas. The argument generally advanced in favour of its being a * It is true that the name /iutista, like the French luthier, designated a maker, not of lutes exclusively, but of stringed instruments in general. So that when in a Medici inventory of 1675 The Concert is described as ‘Un ritratto d’homo che suona il

cimbalo et... . un frate con un liuto’, the entry may not be as inaccurate as it might seem, as ‘a stringed instrument’, rather than a lute specifically, would nechanty have been understood. Though presumably, if one went to buy a viol da gamba, one

did not ask for a lute.

‘

Concerning ‘The Concert’

plucked instrument, such as a lute or a guitar, rather than a viol da

gamba, has been the absence of a bow, an argument which would be more persuasive were the neck of the instrument a different shape. Once when the subject was under discussion, the cellist, Kenneth

Skeaping, was consulted and the following interchange took place: ‘What would you call this instrument?’ ‘I should call it a viol da gamba.’ ‘You wouldn’t call it a lute?’ ‘A lute! Good God, no!’

As an exponent also of the viol da gamba, Skeaping spoke from experience, but expertise apart, it still seems strange that two such distinctive instruments should have been confused even by amateurs, seeing that in both cases the shape of the neck alone should be enough to identify them. In the lute the peg-box is bent back at an angle to the fingerboard and terminates abruptly, whereas in the viol da gamba it is in line with it and terminates either in a figurative head or in a

scroll. Frets are common to both and here in the picture can be dimly discerned. The number of strings is more difficult to determine. There appear to be four alternate ebony and ivory pegs, laterally set, but of this we cannot be certain, owing to the impaired condition of the picture. Were this to be the case we should then be concerned with the type of viol da gamba such as was frequently to be found, which had either one string more or one string less than the traditional six. It is sometimes said that the figurative head preceded the scroll, but this would appear to be too categorical a statement. In the collection of musical instruments in the Castello Sforzesco in Milan there are several examples of early viols, one being dated 1490 and another labelled primitiva, all of which have the traditional scroll. A five-stringed viol da gamba, somewhat similar to the one in The Concert is represented in Parmigianino’s S. Cecilia, who is shown flourishing a bow, on one of the wings of the organ-case belonging to the instrument made in 1542 for S. Maria della Steccata in Parma. But speculations and comparisons, though useful, are not enough, and for a final pronouncement on the matter we must defer to the expert opinion of the famous

Cremonese

18

/iutista, Dott. Fernando

Sacconi,* who, from a study of a photograph of the neck of the instrument, which reveals rather more

than can be seen from an

examination of the painting in situ, believes it to be a five-stringed *

Tam much indebted to Dott. Sacconi for his kind consideration of the problem and also to Dott. Vito Cusumano, President of the Istituto Professionale Internazionale er |’Artigianato Liutario e del Legno, Cremona, who most courteously approached

ae on my behalf.

37

Chapter IT viol da gamba century.

made

*

in Venice

*

towards

the end of the fifteenth

*

*

*

If any hope had been entertained that a study of the early engravings of the picture might have yielded some information as to its condition, before it had been partially obscured by blemished surfaces, discoloured varnishes and extensive areas of over-paint— defects which have now been remedied within the limits of possibility—that hope was unfounded. For engravers, too, it seems, may be inventive and what is wanting has, apparently, sometimes been supplied. And why not, if by the exercise of a little imagination a work may be ostensibly improved and the patron provided, if not with a more complete and perfect work of art, with one that is at least rather more intelligible, albeit to the discomforture of the historian and the

23

detriment of the record? Of the engraver’s tendency to improvise no more typical example could be found than the earliest version of The Concert, a line engraving with some etching, executed by the Dutch engraver, Theodor

Verkruys,

some

time between

1707 and 1726

during his residence in Italy, where he was known as Teodoro della Croce, and where he worked with several others on the reproduction of pictures in the Florentine galleries. It is produced in reverse; the surrounding space has been enlarged to the extent of including the figure of the priest completely within it and that of the young man nearly so. The choir-cape worn by the former which has been somewhat dis-improved by the oddness of the shape, is fully seen, instead of being partly cut off, as it is in the painting. Similarly, the sleeve of the doublet worn by the latter has been more elaborately rendered and has, like the plumes in his hat, been amplified. But, most conspicuously of all, the player has been given a tonsure, the key-board instrument a more clearly defined table and the other instrument the body of a lute. At best, however, engravings seem to be a dubious guide to truth, differing, as they do, not only from the prototype of which they purport to be copies, ‘but ao from one another. In the case of The Concert, all the engravers,* seeking to be explicit where the painter was not and supposing the principal sitter to be a monk, have been at *In addition to the one by T. Verkruys (d.1739) there are also engravings by G. Rossi II (de Rubeis, 1682-1762) F. Stdlzel (1751-1815), G. R. Le Villain (1740-1836) and C. Lasinio (1757-1839).

38

Concerning ‘The Concert’

pains to portray him with a sharply defined tonsure, by which means they have contrived to destroy the intimate and charmingly casual character of the composition and to give it a rather more formal emphasis. Notwithstanding the absence of any indication of a tonsure in an old copy of the picture by an unknown hand in the Palazzo Doria in Rome,* its presence in successive prints might still give us pause, were the player wearing a monastic habit, which he is not, and were the engravings uniform in other respects, which they are not. In some the viola da gamba is shown with three and in others with four visible pegs and in no two cases is the cut of the vestis taloris the same. On the contrary, such are the differences between them that they serve merely to confirm one’s suspicion that the art of the engraver is really an interpretative art and is unreliable to the extent to which he is apt to render not what is given in a picture, but what he thinks should be there, not what he sees, but what he imagines.

The interest of a rare, perhaps even a unique engraving of The Concert, executed towards the end of the eighteenth century by Carlo

Lasinio, centres in the identification of the sitters with which it is

associated. The print, which was acquired by the KupferstichKabinett zu Dresden in 1903, is conjectured by Dott. Mario

Brunetti,’ and with every justification, to have been the subject of a letter addressed to a Venetian connoisseur, Cavalieri Giovanni Mario

Sasso, by Sir Richard Worsley, the last British Resident at Venice prior to the Napoleonic debacle and the fall of the Serene Republic. In the letter, dated 28th March 1797, Sir Richard warmly acknowledged his correspondent’s good offices in regard to ‘Giorgione’s picture of Luther and Calvin—ora divenuto un gioiello’. As we have already seen, the two principal sitters in The Concert were first incorrectly identified as Calvin and Luther in 1697 in an inventory of the guardaroba of Cosimo III, so that although the names on the Dresden print are reversed, they may well have been added as a curatorial aide-mémorre during the time that Lasinio was engaged on the engraving of numerous pictures in the Florentine ducal collections, prior to his appointment as curator of the Pisan gallery sometime after 1789. Thus, despite the inexactitude of Worsley’s terminology, there can be little doubt that the guadro by Giorgione, referred to in his letter, was in fact the incisione by Lasinio of the said giovello, ascribed in Dresden not to Giorgione but to Titian

* This copy, though slightly smaller in both dimensions, appears, nevertheless, to

have been made prior to the enlargement of the support. It 1s considerably better in quality than fight be supposed from the reproduction.

24

Chapter IT unless, of course, he referred to a copy of the picture, perhaps the one now in the Doria collection or some other:of which we have no record. *

*

*

*

*

We must briefly disabuse our minds of the notion that The Concert could conceivably be by Sebastiano or could conceivably be his ‘lost’ Portrait of Verdelot and Obrecht, an hypothesis favoured, incidentally, only by a small minority of the conoscenti. For only by making a sharp distinction between Giorgione’s Concert (which might or might not be by Titian) and Sebastiano’s double portrait (which may or may not be extant) can we avoid confusion in tracing the history and provenance of each in turn. The first mention of Giorgione’s Concert occurs in Le Maraviglie dell’Arte published in Venice in 1648 by Carlo Ridolfi,”° who, in his

life of Giorgione, spoke of it in these words: He did three portraits in one canvas which belongs to Signor Paolo del Sera, a cultured Florentine gentleman who has made himself a name for his knowledge and understanding of painting. The one in the middle is an Augustinian frate, who

is gracefully playing the clavicembalo, and there is another frate with a rubicund face, wearing a rochet and a black cape, who holds a viol; on the other side is a lively youth who has a hat with white plumes on his head. Because of the harmony of the colouring and the mastery and skill of their execution, these figures are reputed to be the best of which he was the author. Nor is it a vain saying that Giorgio, owing to his marvellous diligence, was the first to approximate to nature, confirmation of this truth being provided by these examples.

It was on the publication of his Vita di Jacopo Robusti detto Tintoretto in 1642 that Ridolfi was persuaded by his friends to undertake the history of the lives of other illustrious Venetian painters. Although the two volume work was not published until 1648, the first volume, which contains the life of Giorgione, was completed and dedicated in 1646. It must therefore have been well before that date that Ridolfi had seen and admired The Concert in Paolo del Sera’s cabinet. How long he had had it and where he acquired it remains a matter of speculation, but who, in the first place, was Paolo del Sera? His father, Cosimo di Neri di Luca del Sera,’?! who was born in 1579, became a Senator in 1631 and died in 1655, was Depositario

Generale to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand II. The name of his wife has not been traced, but he had six sons, of whom Paolo,

perhaps the eldest, was born in 1614. Paolo’s artistic inclinations must have declared themselves early in life, because between his

40

Concerning ‘The Concert’

fifteenth and eighteenth year he was set to study painting under the

Florentine master, Domenico Passignano. We know that it cannot

have been earlier than 1628, because Passignano only returned from Rome in that year; it cannot have been later than 1630, because by 1632 del Sera himself was already resident in Venice. Because his Venetian correspondence begins in 1640, it has always been assumed that it was in that year that he established himself in the city to which he belonged, not by birth, but by inclination. But in a letter written in 1655 and preserved in the Archivio di Stato in Florence he said that he had been living in Venice for twenty-three years, that is to say since 1632.* It is easily deducible on other grounds that he must have been living in Venice for some considerable time before 1638, since Tiberio Tinelli, the Venetian painter whose pupil he became and to whom he sat, died in that year. Del Sera was therefore only eighteen years of age when he left Florence, partly in pursuit of his artistic studies, his master Passignano being of the opinion that no one could be a painter without going to Venice, and partly with a view to setting himself up as an art dealer and collector on his own account. The reason for what may seem to be a somewhat precipitate and premature engagement in affari di mercatura in a rival state may perhaps be found in a temporary suspension of the regulations governing the settlement of foreign (i.e. nonVenetian) merchants in Venetian territory. By a decree of 16th

November 1631,’2 following the devastating plague of the previous year, they were to be permitted for a space of three years to engage in any trade they chose, and this being so, it may well have been thought opportune for a young man with del Sera’s predilections to profit by the occasion. And so it was that del Sera, having once established himself in the city of his choice, remained there for the rest of his life. Somewhat incongruously, one may think, he was elected to the Florentine Senate in August 1672, but died a month later in Venice

on 23rd September, at the age of fifty-eight. Much of what we know about the artistic life of seventeenthcentury Venice, its painters, collectors, practices and personalities, is derived from Marco Boschini’s La Carta del Navegar Pitoresco," dialogue in quarta rima, written in an age in which a writer like Boschini, who was not only a connoisseur and art dealer, a restorer and engraver, but a trader in glass beads and perle false to boot, had

at once the opportunity to be informative and the leisure to be tedious. Thus it is from him that we learn of del Sera’s penchant for Venetian

art. ‘I am

a Florentine, I confess’, he is represented as

* | owe this information to the very kind assistance of Dott. Gino Corti.

41

Chapter II saying, ‘but when it comes to painting I am a Venetian and a native of this land’. From Boschini we also learn of the esteem in which he was held as a critic and conoscente, so much so that when he had once

expressed an opinion about the attribution of a picture, no one ventured to contradict him. Therefore, when, sometime before Cardinal Giovanni Carlo de’Medici,

1645, Prince Leopoldo and in collaboration with their

brother, Ferdinand II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, proposed to unite their several collections to form the Uffizi and Palatine Galleries and to enlarge them still further, the choice of Paolo del Sera as one of their agents for the acquisition of Venetian pictures was an obvious one. For over twenty years he carried on an extensive correspondence with the Prince, a man of wide culture and liberal tastes, who himself

became a Cardinal in 1667, after the death of his brother four years earlier. It was not until 1654, however, that he acquired a large part

of del Sera’s collection, of which The Concert was the chef d’oeuwvre. Among the innumerable private collections in Venice at that time, del Sera’s was esteemed as being one of the most important and was described at length by Boschini, who began with a eulogistic account of a picture, which may or may not be The Concert. Owing to certain discrepancies, some critics are sceptical about it, but on the whole there are more reasons in favour of accepting the identification than rejecting it. In the following stanzas Boschini speaks of the work as a masterpiece. First of all we behold a picture by Giorgione, Where several Religious may be observed, With divers musical instruments engaged In a concert of concordant melodies.*

St vede in prima de Zorzon un quadro Dove se osserva alcuni Religiosi, Con diversi istrumenti armoniost Far un concerto musico legiardro.

Nearby a portrait of Monteverde hangs, By the hand of Strozzi, the Genoese painter, Whose brush such memorable works has wrought That he to Fame shall never be unknown.

Ghe ‘I retrato vesin del Monteverde, De man del Strozzi, pttor genoese,

Penel che ha fate memoranda imprese; Si che Fama per li mai no’se perde. * Doggerel for doggerel.

Concerning ‘The Concert’ How right it seems that he is there to listen

To just those madrigals and those motets,

He is there all attention. Effects more living

Truly could never be attained.

Par giusto, che 'l sta la, per ascoltar Quet madrigali, aponto, e quei moteti: L’é la tuto atentione. Pit vivi efeti No’se poteva veramente far. O what a composition he has here achieved: O what a Giorgione that concert has revealed! Every singer in that picture seems to be alive, And, by reflection, the portrait, too, seems living. O che ‘l componimento elo g’ha fato; O che Zorzon ghe insegna quel tenor! Par vivo in su quel quadro ogni Cantor E, per reflesso, vivo anche el retrato. Tt is thou, Giorgione, who performest these wonders

Infusing into thine own pictures movement itself, And thereby into any other chancing to be near. Great prowess, a great brush and comparable colours. Zorzon, ti e quel chefa de sti stupori, Infondendo ai si to’ quadri el moto istesso; E cust a quet, che se te trova apresso. Gran virtu, gran penel, degni colori. poo?

The arguments against identifying The Concert with the picture so eloquently described by Boschini, though patent, are not insuperable. It is true that there are two and not several Religiosi, that there are two and not several instruments, that the layman is not mentioned,

that the concert is not in progress, but most probably just over or not yet begun, and that for all the closeness of Monteverde’s attention, the singer remains silent. In answer to these objections it can only be said that there is no other early cinquecento painting, whether attributable to Giorgione or not, to which Boschini’s description remotely applies and, more importantly still, with what other picture among those which Leopoldo de’Medici acquired from Paolo del Sera could the principal work listed in Boschini’s catalogue be compared ? The time taken by Boschini to compose his 5,370 quatrains has been estimated by Anna Pallucchini, the editor of the 1966 edition of the work, to have been four years, that is to say, from 1656 to 1660.

But how long he had been in assembling his material before this and to what extent he had to rely on his own memory and on the 43

Chapter IT recollections of others to supply the deficiencies of his records (which must certainly have existed) no one can say. That there might have been one or two minor discrepancies in his account of a picture that had left Venice two years before the ostensible beginning of his formidable enterprise is therefore understandable, besides which some allowance must surely be made for ‘poetic’ licence and for the rigorous requirements of rhymed verse. The little information we possess about the documented history of The Concert may now be summarized. Nothing whatever is known as to its whereabouts between the first decade of the sixteenth century, when it may be presumed to have been painted, and the fourth decade of the seventeenth century when it made its appearance in the cabinet of a Florentine gentleman resident in Venice, who, having kept it in his possession for some ten years or more eventually sold it in 1654 to his Florentine patron Leopoldo de’Medici through whom, together with a number of other pictures from the same source it became part of the Florentine heritage. One of the principal ornaments of the Palatine

Gallery, it remained

there until 1799, when,

as related

above, it was removed to Paris during the Napoleonic occupation of Italy. There it remained until in 1815 it was happily restored to Florence, when in accordance with the decrees of the Congress of

Vienna, the plundered treasures of Europe were returned to the countries to which they belonged. Paolo del Sera’s attribution of The Concert to Giorgione was naturally accepted without question by his contemporaries, but more significantly it was recognized as a masterpiece from the outset. Ridolfi described it as the finest work Giorgione ever painted and the three portraits as rart esempi of his art; Boschini hailed it with wonder and admiration and the French, during the time when they had it in their possession, recognized it as a work of surpassing excellence. Nor can Anna Maria Ciaranfi, formerly Director of the Palatine Gallery, be deemed to have over-stated the case when she spoke of The Concert as being ‘one of the greatest masterpieces of Italian art—perhaps

indeed of all art’.”+

Seeing, then, that Giorgione was no uncoveted master, nor The Concert a negligible painting, it seems strange that there should be no

records of it either in Venice or anywhere else before 1646, nor any mention of it in connection with Giorgione, or, for that matter, with

any other painter in the more

nearly contemporary

accounts

of

Michiel or Vasari. Where can it have been, one wonders, and in whose

possession before the mid seventeenth century? To this enigma no solution has as yet been proposed. * aN

*

*

*

*

Concerning ‘The Concert’

Conversely, the provenance of Sebastiano’s ‘lost’ portrait of the two musicians is documented from the beginning. As shown above, the

portrait was painted during the first half of 1505 (the only date at which it could have been painted), when the two men, both Northerners, happened to be in Venice together. The painting may have belonged to Verdelot initially, but in any case it became his property, since, as Vasari” tells us, he took it with him to Florence when he went to take up his appointment as maestro di cappella at the Baptistry. Whether directly or indirectly it afterwards passed into the possession of the sculptor, Francesco da Sangallo, who, as Vasari

also explicitly tells in his edition of 1567, ‘has it in his studio today’. Sangallo died in 1576 and after his death his son, as we are informed by a later historian, Raffaello Borghini,’© sold it, with a number of

other things, to another sculptor, Ridolfo Sirigatti. Though not one of the great sculptors Sirigatti was certainly highly accomplished, if we may judge from the sympathetically observed

and skilfully executed portrait busts’’ of his father and mother,

Niccolo and Cassandra Sirigatti, which he carved, as we know from

an inscription on the back of each in 1576/78, as a tribute of affection to both parents. On his mother’s side he came of artistic stock, his grandfather being the painter, Ridolfo Ghirlandaio and his great grandfather the even greater painter, Domenico Ghirlandaio. Besides being a practising sculptor and, incidentally, the master of Pietro

ze Ze

Bernini, father of the more famous Giovanni Lorenzo, Sirigatti was

very much a man of parts, an amateur and a gentleman. From his role in Borghin1’s // Riposo, we learn that he was himself a connoisseur and collector, who moved in distinguished circles. In 1581 he was created

a Cavaliere of the Order of S. Stefano,’® in which he twice held office as Gran Conservatore, the first time in 1590 and the second in 1605.

From the fact recorded by Borghini, that Sirigatti kept Sebastiano’s Portrait of Verdelot and Obrecht in his study we may surmise that he had a special regard for it, though it was but one of the many works of art and antiquities with which he adorned his handsome palazzo in the Via Pietrapiano in Florence. Most unfortunately nothing is known about the disposal of the collection after his death, nor has any trace of a will been found. That his death is not recorded in the official Florentine registers, Libri det Morti, may perhaps be explained by the fact that he died in Pisa, where the celebration of his obsequies on 13th May 1508 is noted in the Archivio di S. Stefano.* He died at * This material item of information was most courteously supplied by Dott. Bruno Casini of the Archivio di Stato, Pisa, to whom I am most grateful. I am also much beholden to my friend R. W. Lightbown, who was at great pains

to communicate certain information about the Sirigatti of which I stood in need.

45

Chapter IT the relatively early age of fifty-eight and was buried in the Chiesa de’Barnabiti. Connected with some of the leading Florentine families, the holder of many important offices, both in Florence and in Pisa, a member of the Guild of Silk, U’Arte della Seta, a competent sculptor and an eminent conoscente, Ridolfo Sirigatti appears to have been a man as likeable as he was versatile and as knowledgeable as he was generous about the attainments of others. His son Ranuccio, by his wife Antonia di Touai de’ Medici, was only

twenty-one years of age when his father died and unless he happened to be endowed with a comparable artistic feeling and antiquarian taste, may well have felt encumbered by the richness and variety of his inheritance, comprehending, as it did sculpture, both models and

originals in bronze and marble, natural and mechanical objects, crystals and shells, globes and clocks, a diversity of musical instruments, books and entablatures, as well as an impressive collection of Flemish, Dutch and Italian pictures, including a large Michelangelo Cartoon.* What became of this vast miscellany after Ridolfo’s death is unknown. There is in any event no mention of works of art of any kind in Ranuccio’s will, which is dated 21st March 1617. But if this

was in fact his last will and testament (made long before his marriage to Maddalena Spinelli and the birth of his two daughters) it must have been considerably out of date at the time of his death thirty years

later, so that no particular significance can be attached to it. Ranuccio Sirigatti, a Cavaliere di S. Stefanoj from the age of nineteen, died in Florence and was buried in S. Croce, the church of his forefathers, on

30th June 1647. With its acquisition by Ridolfo Sirigatti in 1576 and its presumed retention in his cabinet until his death in 1608, Sebastiano’s cele-

brated and evidently much-prized Portrait of Verdelot and Obrecht disappears from the record. *

*

*

*

*

By what must surely seem an odd coincidence, only the early history of the Portrait of Verdelot and Obrecht and the later history of The Concert is known to us. The provenance of the first is fully documented from the time that it was painted until the beginning of the seventeenth century (aways assuming, as seems likely, that * At one time it included Botticelli’s Judith, which Sirigatti presented to the Grand Duchess, Bianca Capello, as a mark of esteem. tA military Order of Knighthood founded in Pisa in 1562 by Cosimo I.

46

Concerning ‘The Concert’

Sirigatti kept it in his possession), that of the second from the middle of the same century until the present day. Nothing is known of the one before and nothing of the other after the half-century common to them both. That a recorded portrait of two eminent musicians should disappear is not remarkable, but that an unrecorded portrait of two unidentified musicians should appear, unaccountably, some thirty-six years after the disappearance of the other is remarkable, not so much in itself as because of the unique character and superlative quality of the newly discovered masterpiece. It is this that excites suspicion. Indeed, such are the circumstances that the question as to whether the two pictures are not in fact one and the same can no longer be evaded. What, then, stylistic considerations apart, are the probabilities? The salient argument in favour of the supposition that the ‘lost’ Portrait of Verdelot and Obrecht survives in The Concert resides in the fact that although Sebastiano’s portrait was last heard of in Florence, while The Concert was first heard of in Venice, it was in the

cabinet of a Florentine gentleman that it made its appearance. As there are no previous references to the work, so far as we are aware, the obvious inference must be that Paolo del Sera, having

acquired it from Ridolfo Sirigatti’s heirs, whether directly or otherwise, took it with him when he left Florence for Venice, or, if not, that

he subsequently purchased it through an intermediary. Among the various pictures that he took with him originally Baldinucci”? makes special mention of a Martyrdom of S. Andrea by Carlo Dolci, which was one of the first works he sold on his arrival, a sale that brought him no little credit, it seems, and one that did much to establish his

position as an agent of repute. But even supposing in the interests of the present discussion that the ‘lost’ Sebastiano and The Concert are identical, not every problem connected with the latter is thereby solved. To begin with there is the question of the attribution. Under whose name was the work acquired whether by del Sera himself or by someone else? Were the names of the painter and his sitters no longer known or had they been conveniently forgotten? Alternatively, had the unfashionable hand of Sebastiano been rejected and the highlyprized hand of Giorgione been intuitively recognized in a flash of critical inspiration? Who can say? With the best will in the world, it is easy enough, as we know, to

confuse the names of sitters who cannot be readily identified and afterwards to forget them altogether. Even by Borghini’s time the record was no longer accurate.

‘Uberto’, he wrote, ‘was Verdelot’s

companion when he became maestro di cappella at S. Giovanni’, but if that had been the case, he failed to explain how Sebastiano, who

47

Chapter IT was

then

in Rome,

came

to paint them.

All things considered,

however, it seems more than likely that after Ridolfo’s death the names

of the sitters, if not that of the painter, were finally lost to

memory. But under whatever name it left Florence, the painting was accepted in Venice as being without question by Giorgione, no matter how different it might be from anything else associated with his name. Whether del Sera was responsible for the ascription or not 1s immaterial, since, as we have already seen such was his reputation as a connoisseur, if Boschini may be believed, that once he had made a

pronouncement about a picture no one would have had the temerity to contradict him— Che quando a un quadro lu ghe da credenza, Contra la so opinion nissun no tresca. p. 396.

Though whether he himself genuinely believed the painting to be by Giorgione

is another

matter,

a matter

that cannot,

however,

be

determined without reference to another hypothesis, upon the acceptance or rejection of which much would depend. Del Sera’s reason for preferring a Giorgione to a Sebastiano (supposing the choice had been open to him) is obvious, nor would any collector of the period have done otherwise. For while from a Venetian poimt of view Sebastiano had at that time come to be considered rather as a Roman painter, Giorgione had remained so miraculous, rare and mysterious a Venetian that his works were everywhere regarded as being infinitely desirable. Almost anything within reason that might conceivably be attributed to him was therefore much to be coveted. In La Carta del Navegar Pitoresco there are no less than twenty-five laudatory allusions to him as being the great innovator, who brought painting to life to the stupefaction of the whole world— Alora la Pitura fu dasseno; Alora tuto el Mondo se stupiva; Perche 1 vedeva la pitura viva, Fata con gran giudicio e con gran seno.

a p-

To Sebastiano, who although acknowledged to be an ecelente e gran Pitor, there are, on the other hand, only two allusions nor was he held te havereca vedunbe Omics Orde Piombo* an honour comparable * Having been appointed to the office of Piombatore sometime between 3rd October and 21st November 1531, Sebastiano Luciani or Viniziano thereinafter became known

as Sebastiano

del. Piombo.

The office, a department

of the Chancery

ostensibly involved with affixing the leaden seals Taishi lead) to Papal Bulls ete. For a fuller discussion see p. 113 et seq.

Concerning ‘The Concert’

with that conferred upon Titian by the Emperor, Charles V, in 1533 in the form of the gold chain of a Cavaliere dello Speron d’oro. Contrary to what one might have thought, it seems that in the sixteenth century the hand of Giorgione and the hand of Sebastiano could easily be confused and as a case in point the portrait of an armed man belonging to Giulio de’Nobili should perhaps be cited. In his 1 Riposo Borghini first assigns it without hesitation to Giorgione and then, with equal assurance to Sebastiano. As the portrait has not been identified no comment can be made about it one way or the other, though there is no doubt as to which attribution the connois-

seurs of the period in general and Giulio de’Nobili in particular would have preferred to accept. Yet much though collectors might aspire to the possession of a Giorgione, the agents could hardly be expected to supply what was really not to be had—or could they? After all, what were the skills of lesser painters for, if not to imitate the greater and thereby with all discretion to satisfy a persistent and irresistible demand? Hence, if works by Giorgione and other desirable masters were not to be come by, then counterfeits and copies had perforce to be substituted. Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of this spurious trade, which became common in Venice during the seventeenth century, was the openness with which it was discussed, not as a discreditable enterprise, but as a commendable achievement, for which the artful copyist or labile falsificatore was rather to be praised than blamed, being as much or more to be admired than the original painter. This might have been laudable enough had there been no intention to deceive or defraud, but was this always the case? Apparently not, since as often as not the object was to pass off the copy as an original, as if, forsooth, to confound critical opinion were as meritorious in principle as it proved beyond question to be expedient in practice. To all this Boschini must be our witness— ... mui stimo tanto Chi un de quei quadri de copiar sia bon, Quanto talun, che fazza invension; E chi Vimita merita gran vanto. p. 304.

Sia sempre benedete quele man, Che con virti confonde lopinion. p. 037.

Among these copyists or falsificatort some were necessarily more versatile than others, certain of whom specialized in imitating the

work of specific painters. Not so Pietro Muttoni, called della Vecchia,®° who from the experience he gained as a restorer and from

49

Chapter II his study of sixteenth century techniques, acquired a facility that enabled him not only to reproduce individual styles, but also to fake the brush-work and patina of older pictures. This facility stood him in good stead, for by this means he succeeded in adorning the galleries of the nobility, princes and cardinals, with examples of the most sought-after cinquecento masters, Giorgione, Palma Vecchio, Correg-

gio, Pordenone, Titian and others, all executed with extraordinary virtuosity by his own hand— Savendo lu calcar UVistessa strada De molti ecelentissimi Pitori.

p. 537.

Brilliant, accomplished and reprehensible, il Vecchia, besides being

a painter and restorer, was also (somewhat anomalously, one may think) a notable consultant where the purchase of works of art was concerned. In this capacity he was well supported by his father-inlaw, Nicol Renieri,®! the most unscrupulous of the spacciatori falsi, who, although a respected adviser to the Duke of Modena.* was nevertheless ‘prepared to furnish pictures by any artist who might be required’, not excepting a Giorgione Self-Portrait, which he commissioned from il Vecchia, who in his turn, at a later date, was not

ashamed to acknowledge the deception. And why, indeed, should he have been, seeing that it was, after all, as the ‘ape’, la simia di

Guorgione, that he excelled? He even went so far on one occasion as to boast

that he could

invent

Giorgiones

out

of his head,

without

recourse to such Giorgiones as might be available. It is possible, moreover, that it was to this relative freedom of handling that he

owed his reputation and that it was to his practice of re-creating, rather than copying the costumes of an earlier period that lent his pictures a verisimilitude that more laborious methods might not have achieved, a verisimilitude that was, however, perhaps more apparent than real. This is suggested by Boschini’s description of a Giorgionesque figure of a young man with a dagger, tricked out in what purported to be early sixteenth century costume, a white satin doublet and a bizarre hat— Con un pugmale la una figura tresca, E tien bizaro in testa bareton; De raso bianco la veste un zipon: Figura in suma aponto zorzonesco. p. 940. * Francesco I, 1629-1658, Duke of Modena and Reggio, a collateral descendant of Alfonso d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio. When Alfonzo II died without

issue in 1597 Ferrara was annexed by Clement Villand became part of the States of the Church, and the capital of the Duchy was moved to Modena.

30

Concerning ‘The Concert’ —a

figure then in Cesare Tebaldi’s collection, which, according to

contemporary opinion, Giorgione himself, had he been there to see it, would readily have acknowledged with the words V’ho fato mi; questa xe mia. At this point and in this connection a suggestion, not hitherto entertained, engages our attention. Might the intrusive third figure in The Concert have been, if not added, perhaps Giorgionized, sometimes after it reached Venice, by that arch falsificatore, Pietro Muttoni della Vecchia? The possibility cannot be summarily dismissed, unexpected though such a dénouement might be, if only because it would account for those otherwise unaccountable disparities in the picture that have never been satisfactorily explained. It would account for the inferior handling of the behatted youth; for the lack of assurance palpable to the experienced eye of the costume expert; in the rendering of his garments; for the caravaggesque style of the much beplumed hat, unparalleled in the sixteenth century, but characteristic of the seventeenth—almost it might seem the bizaro bareton beloved of della Vecchia; and above all for the unease of connoisseurs in face of

it, no matter whether the work be assigned to Giorgione or, now more commonly, to Titian. The suspicion that the painting may have been tampered with is strengthened by the difference of facture revealed by the radiograph in the treatment of the face, as opposed to the clothing of the anonimo. Admittedly, the evidence is differently interpreted in the laboratory, but assuming the foregoing hypothesis to be correct, for the sake of argument, then we must suppose that the Venetian mercanti did not believe the work to be by Giorgione, or if by Giorgione so implausibly so as to require further endorsement. This in seventeenth century Venice, which boasted not only the skills of Pietro della Vecchia, but those of his fellow fabricators, men such as

Carlo Scaiaro,* Giambattista Zampezzo,} Pietro Librit and Nicolo Renieri,§ would not have been difficult. In his Breve Instruzione®* Boschini himself supplies the formula for producing a veritable Giorgione when he speaks of those ‘solemn figures in extravagantly plumed hats, dressed in an out-moded style, in which the shirt is * Carlo Scaiaro (d. 1651) a close associate of del Sera’s. + Gianbattista Zampezzo, 1627-1700, imitated both Giorgione’s and Bassano’s work. (Boschini, op. cit. p. 306.) + Pietro Libri, 1614-1687, is said to have sold twoof his own pictures early in his career, by passing them off as being by Guido Reni. (Savina Branca, op. cit. p. 58: Boschini, op. cit. pp. Ix, 41, 535. § Nicolo Renieri, 1590-1667, a painter and dealer from Maubeuge who settled in

Venice.

oF

Chapter IT visible beneath the slashed full-sleeved doublets’. But for all that he might profess himself to be ‘dazzled’ by what, like everyone else, he regarded as an art of surpassing “grace and perfection’ Boschini was apt at times, as Anna Pallucchini®® so pertinently observed, to see Giorgione’s art through the eyes of his friend and collaborator, Pietro della Vecchia, with whose re-creations, not to say forgeries, he was

intimately acquainted. That a seventeenth century dealer in Venice might have resorted to the expedient of Giorgionizing a composition patently by another hand and, one may venture to think, by an incomparably superior hand, in order to pass it off as a Giorgione, however little to be commended or condoned, is understandable, seeing that the master of

Castelfranco was the rarest and most coveted of all the early Venetian painters. If, on the contrary, the third figure is not in any sense a fabrication, then it can only be said that the weaknesses it displays are precisely those that one would expect it to betray if it were. Though perhaps not wholly incompatible, it is nevertheless superfluous in so far as the requirements of the composition are concerned; it is Giorgionesque in a general rather than a specific sense; it belongs on the evidence of the costume partly to the cunquecento and partly to the seicento and is manifestly so inferior to the other sitters, both m characterization and in facture as to argue the intervention of another hand. One has, moreover, only to compare the two sitters with the third to perceive at a glance the difference between the vital and the inert in portraiture. Whatever the merits or demerits of an hypothesis that in all probability can never be either proved or disproved conclusively, a word about Paolo del Sera’s position in Venice and the society in which he moved may not be inappropriate. Although it cannot be said for certain that del Sera entered into a partnership immediately or soon after his arrival in Venice as a young man, it seems more likely than not that he did so, inasmuch as it would have accorded with normal practice. It is known, in any case, that he had a partner, in the person of Bartolomeo Bufalini,** at the time of his death and had previously been associated with Carlo Scaiaro,®° presumably as a partner, sometime before Scaiaro’s death in 1651. Of Bufalini nothing is known, but about Scaiaro a little

information has been preserved. Said to have been the most fortunate and renowned of the three sons of Antonio Scaiaro, who had married

Jacabo Bassano’s daughter, Chiara, Carlo Scaiaro was a friend of Carlo Ridolfi’s, who held him in particular esteem and described him as being an eccelente Pittore and erudito nella Pittura e nelle buone

52

Concerning ‘The Concert’

lettere. None of his work, as far as we know, has come down to us, or

at least nothing that can be distinguished from that of his grandfather, Jacopo, of whose style he was so able a falsificatore that on one occasion even Ridolfi was deceived. As far as his association with del Sera is concerned,

we

must

assume

it to have been a business

association or possibly a connection through marriage, but in either case a close relationship, because pictures known to have been in one and the same collection are sometimes said by Ridolfi to belong to del Sera and sometimes to Scaiaro. Again, in the seicento inventories of

pictures

in private

collections

im Venice,

published

by Savini

Branca,®° the pictures in del Sera’s cabinet, which are specifically

stated to be his, appear under the heading—Scaiaro Carlo: vedi Ponte, da Sera del. The same is true of certain specific pictures mentioned elsewhere in the same work, which are listed as belonging

indifferently to one or the other. In the circumstances it may reasonably be supposed that the two men were in fact partners, perhaps originally introduced by Tiberio Tinelli, who had belonged to the Bassano school, where he had been a pupil of Leandro da Ponte’s, Jacopo’s son, from whose portraits his own were hardly to be distinguished. The milieu in which the young del Sera found himself on his arrival in Venice in 1632 was not, therefore, one that was likely to encourage over scrupulous dealing in a specialist trade, which, while it existed like all others, primarily as a money-making enterprise, was beset by temptations of an unusually insidious kind. By the beginning of the seventeenth century the lust for collecting works of art had become almost endemic

among

the rich, who, for obvious

reasons,

were

peculiarly dependent for their acquisitions upon the judgment and good faith of their agents. These, in their turn, were wholly dependent upon the extent to which they were able to satisfy the growing demands made upon them. As a result a proneness to please the patron and to gratify his desires, if not in one way then in another, rather than to walk single-minded in the way of truth, inevitably prevailed. An ambitious dealer, faced by an avid and often credulous clientele, may well have felt that the production of a copy, an imitation or a fake was infinitely to be preferred to the prospect of a patron, disappointed, dissatisfied, disgruntled and displeased, who if he were not duped by one merchant would almost certainly be misled by another. It is also possible that some subterfuges may have seemed more defensible than others. In addition to the agents already discussed there was another sensale di quadri,8" who knew all the tricks of the trade, ¢ secrets di coptare efalsificare, which he learnt from his friend and collaborator

a)

Chapter IT Pietro della Vecchia, namely Boschini himself, a man for whom del Sera had the highest regard and who, on del Sera’s death in 1672,

became Cardinal Leopoldo’s adviser in his stead. But even discounting this association, del Sera must have been as fully informed of the practices of his period as Boschini, whether he approved of them or not. That he would not have approved of them is extremely unlikely, for as Anna Pallucchini®®* has been at pains to point out ‘the ability to counterfeit, which we find scandalizing, was then regarded as a

wonderful proof of virtuosity’. Had it been otherwise we can hardly suppose that the loquacious Boschini, whose respect for del Sera’s connoisseurship was equalled only by his admiration for della Vecchia’s Giorgionismo, would have been quite so outspoken or quite so eloquent in his praises of a brush by which the dilettanti were deceived and the conoscenti confounded. Even more astonishing was the frankness of his admission that pictures purporting to be by Giorgione, though being in reality by della Vecchia, passed into collections as important and renowned as those belonging to the Archduke of Austria and the Grand Duke of Tuscany.®? Judged even by the ethical standards of the period, such a confession seems strange, but may perhaps have been occasioned by a retrospective awareness that the frauds might not always escape detection and that only by extolling the prowess of della Vecchia and by pretending that his imitations redounded to the glory of Giorgione and were almost as much to be desired as works genuinely by his hand could those responsible hope to be exonerated. Also if it were known that some of the most eminent collectors of the age—alcuni dei pw intendenti—had been deceived, albeit to their cost, then might not an agent be forgiven for an understandable error of judgment, if not commended for an impeccable judgment of taste? *

*

*

*

*

By no one was the uniqueness of The Concert in relation to the rest of Giorgione’s oeuvre more unequivocally recognized than by Lionello Venturi, who passionately wished to accept the attribution and ultimately did so despite his earlier declaration that the problem of its authorship was insoluble. Some thirty years before he had expressed the opinion already quoted that ‘if the existence of a dramatic work by Giorgione should one day be proved to exist, then of all the * In the 2nd edition of Boschini’s Carta del Navagar Pittoresco, published under her

editorship in 1966. All references are to this onnide

Concerning ‘The Concert’

pictures in the Pitti The Concert would by right be his’. Happily, no such naive and inadequate criterion need be proposed in order to ascribe the painting to Sebastiano, the only artist to whom it could belong, when the counter-claims of Titian, again on Venturi’s showing, have also been dismissed, mainly because ‘the spirituality’ of The Concert exceeds anything to which we are accustomed in Titian’s work. Supposing, however, for the sake of argument, that the picture could, with equal credibility, be assigned to any one of the three painters, it would still constitute something of an anomaly, inasmuch as it exemplifies a degree of sublimation never before achieved by Giorgione, never afterwards attained by Titian and never again recaptured by Sebastiano with comparable passion. Notwithstanding the fact that in Sebastiano’s art the dramatic power denied to Giorgione and the spiritual intensity unknown to Titian are combined,

the contention of certain art historians that

Sebastiano’s claims to The Concert are paramount has been tacitly, not to say conveniently, ignored by later critics. Perhaps because he is altogether too intellectual, too profound and too rare a painter ever to have had a popular appeal, Sebastiano has come in recent years to be regarded almost as a minor artist, whose name means little or nothing

to many whose connoisseurship is unassailable. That one of the great masterpieces of the world should prove to be by his hand is not therefore an attribution likely to be entertained with favour, much less with enthusiasm by those who would much prefer to let sleeping dogs lie, if a more fashionable and less controversial ascription may thereby be retained. To ignore a proposition is not, however, to invalidate it; hence our modern disposition to neglect a painter whom Michelangelo held to be ‘unique’ and to whom, after the death of Raphael, ‘the first place in the art of painting was universally conceded’, hardiy argues on our part the possession of superior critical powers or the exercise of an infallible judgment. But even before this he had enjoyed a reputation of no mean order. In a letter to Michelangelo dated 1st January 1519, Leonard, sellaio, had written

saying that ‘all those who know anything rate him much above Raphael’.* ate. It appears, furthermore, that Michelangelo was not alone in his insistence upon Sebastiano’s unique quality, nor was his opinion a at the end of April matter of hearsay. In a letter to Sebastiano written begun with an having o, Michelangel or the beginning of May 1525 * ‘Bastiano riesce di modo che quanti intendenti ci sono lo metono di grandissima lungha sopra a Rafaello’. (Gotti. II, p. 56.)

cD

Chapter IT

account of a supper partly given by a certain Capitano Cuio Dini, which he had immensely enjoyed, then went on— I not only enjoyed the supper, which was extremely pleasurable, but also and even more the discussions that took place. And then, later on, my pleasure in the discussions increased on hearing the said Capitano mention your name. Nor was this all; still later I was infinitely delighted when on the subject of art I heard the said Capitano say that you are altogether unique and were held to be so in Rome. So that had it been possible to be more cheerful I should have been. Seeing, then, that my opinion is justified, don’t say henceforth that you are not unique when I write and tell you that you are, because there are too many witnesses and there is a picture here, thank God, which proves, to anyone with eyes to see, that I’m right.”°

This being the considered opinion of a master whose critical judgment was valued above that of anyone else in sixteenth century Italy, who are we in the twentieth century to gainsay it? It is evident from the way in which he spoke of it that the picture of which Michelangelo referred was a work of exceptional quality. Because it had been the subject of the immediately preceding correspondence, the painting in question has hitherto always been identified as the Anton Francesco degli Albizzi portrait. The work had been finished at the end of April 1525 and its arrival was eagerly awaited in Florence towards the middle or end of May, allowing for the means of transport then available For this reason all authorities* without exception have assigned Michelangelo’s undated draft to May of that year. But this is surely a mistake, seeing that Sebastiano had replied to Michelangelo’s letter on 22nd April and had concluded by saying that l’unico Aretino} had seen his letter and had protested that it was he who was unique and not Sebastiano. On these grounds Michelangelo’s letter and the supper party, from which he had derived such unwonted pleasure presumably belong, not to May, but to April 1525. This being so, the picture which Michelangelo had in mind cannot have been the Albizzi portrait, and instead, must be assumed to have been the apparently well-known Portrait of Verdelot and Obrecht since it was probably the only, certainly the only major work by Sebastiano known beyond reasonable doubt to have been in Florence at that time. *

*

*

*

*

Had not The Concert—famous above all for the impressive head of the principal sitter—been for so long bandied about between Gior* Myself included. + Punico Aretino 1.e. Bernardo Accolti, 1458-1535. + Presumably still in Verdelot’s possession.

56

Concerning ‘The Concert’

gione and Titian, and had not the colossal Head of a Youth in the nineth lunette in the Sala di Galatea in the Villa Farnesina in Rome been similarly bandied about between Peruzzi and Sebastiano, the striking resemblance between the two heads and the detectable hand of Sebastiano might long ago have been perceived. The first reference to the Farnesina head occurs in the Scherno degli Det, a poem, published in 1627 by Francesco Bracciolini, who, although he makes no mention of the name of the painter described the work as ‘surpassing the brush of Raphael’. Perhaps he took it for granted that the study was by Sebastiano and assumed that everyone else did the same, as he had been responsible for all the other lunettes in the loggia. In order to account for the presence of this extraordinary head amid the decorations of a room with which it has nothing in

26 28

common, two anecdotes, the one as silly as the other, became current

during the eighteenth century, but no feasible explanation as to how or why it came to be there has so far been forthcoming. The Villa Farnesina, built by Baldassare Peruzzi for the Sienese banker, Agostino Chigi, whose wealth exceeded and whose magnificence surpassed the ambition of princes, was completed in 1511. Shortly before this Sebastiano had been invited by Chigi to come to Rome to assist in its decoration, for which he, Raphael and Peruzzi were to be jointly responsible. It appears that during a visit to Venice in the spring of the same year Chigi had been as much attracted by the pleasing and entertaining disposition of the young Venetian as he had been impressed by his musical abilities and artistic endowments. For according to Vasari, ‘not painting, but music had been Sebastiano’s

earliest profession,

since besides

singing, he delighted in

playing various instruments, especially the lute, on which he could perform all the parts without other accompaniment’. And, as he goes on to say, ‘this ability rendered him a favourite with the Venetian nobility, with whom he was always on familiar terms’.?! On his arrival in Rome Sebastiano was immediately set to paint the nine lunettes of the Loggia del Giardino, or Sala di Galatea, as it was

afterwards called. The scenes chosen were drawn from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which were, however, more in keeping with the decorations of the vault, already completed by Peruzzi himself, than with the exercise of Sebastiano’s particular talents. Whether a typical Roman intrigue, of the kind contrived by Bramante and Raphael in an attempt to discredit Michelangelo over the Sistine vault, was here involved would be hard to say, but one cannot imagine that Peruzzi, himself a Sienese and engaged in the service of a Sienese, the great

Maecenas of his period, would have been best pleased by his patron’s determination to introduce a Venetian element into the decorative

oe

Chapter IT scheme, and, in the event, any objections he may have had would appear to have been justified. Sebastiano’s frescoes were not a success.* With few exceptions, notably the Phaeton in the sixth lunette, the figures are awkward, ill-proportioned and faintly absurd, besides being over-large for the spaces in which they are confined, a fault which inevitably induces a sense of stultification. There is, in fact, almost nothing to be said in their defence, inasmuch as the lightness of touch, the gaiety and the charm essential to decorations of this type are conspicuous only by their absence. Nor can the inadequacy of the forms really be said to be offset by the liveliness of the colour. But is not this exactly what one would expect of a painter whose métier was not the execution of banal or relatively banal decorations and whose medium was not fresco? In any event it is significant that except for the lunette in S. Pietro in Montorio, these lunettes and the Polyphemus were the first and last frescoes Sebastiano ever undertook. For it will be remembered that later on, when the painting of the altar-wall of the Sistine Chapel was under discussion and it was thought that he and Michelangelo might collaborate, he had the wall prepared for oil and not for fresco, without consulting Michelangelo—an ill-advised proceeding as it turned out, since, if Vasari may be believed, it led to a permanent disruption of their friendship. If Chigi’s expectations in regard to the Farnesina lunettes were based on what he had seen of Sebastiano’s early achievements in Venice—the 5. Giovanni Crisostomo altar-piece, the wings of the organ case in S. Bartolomeo a Rialto and perhaps among other portraits that of Verdelot and Obrecht—he cannot but have been disappointed. In an attempt to explain the presence of the incongruous colossal head, let us suppose for a moment that this was so and that when he first inspected the lunettes, perhaps when they had been partially uncovered and not all were executed, Chigi did not conceal his displeasure in the work. Would it not in these circumstances have been entirely in character, if, in a spirit of bravado and with Michelangelo’s bold effects in the Sistine in mind, Sebastiano had suddenly resolved to show his prowess when working on a different scale and in a different medium? This boldly modelled,

brilliantly foreshortened

head, the tilt of

which, together with the clearly defined features, the curly hair and characteristic contrapposto recalls nothing so much as the distinctive head of the principal sitter in The Concert, has all the appearance of * As Michael Hurst has justly observed the lunettes ‘are something of an embarrassment for the painter’s admirers’ (Sebastiano del Piombo (1981, p. 34)).

dS

Concerning ‘The Concert’

being an inpromptu exercise, swiftly conceived and as swiftly brought to completion. Still further verisimilitude is lent to this supposition by the somewhat haphazard positioning of the head in the lunette, by the fact that it is a monochrome study in tempera (not in charcoal (carbone) as is commonly said) drawn on the rough plaster (arricchio grezzo) and not like true fresco with pigments ground in water and applied to the smooth plaster (intonaco) while still wet. Instead it is a painting @ secco, a method that Sebastiano would eminently have preferred. The alternative suggestion put forward by Hermanin that the head represents a trial piece painted by Sebastiano at the beginning of the enterprise lacks credibility, as it is difficult to see what purpose would have been served by the production of a head that bears no relationship whatsoever to the required decorations and is carried out a secco and not in fresco proper, the medium prescribed. But whatever the occasion of its painting, neither Biagio,?* Hermanin nor Pallucchini have any hesitation in attributing it to Sebastiano, as opposed to Peruzzi, to whom it is now generally assigned. Among these advocates Gerlini is one of the most uncompromising, being of the opinion that the head 1s in the nature of a preliminary study in perspective carried out before Sebastiano began work on the lunettes. But her arguments are inconclusive; since if a number of Peruzzi’s

figures in the same room may be invoked as exhibiting the same ‘fundamental elements of design, chiaroscuro and modelling’, Sebastiano’s inverted Phaeton may likewise be cited with equal justification, as showing similar foreshortenings and a similar inclination of the head. It is not, however, so much to incidentals of this kind that

we must look in trying to gauge the probabilities, but rather to the overall character of the work, which in terms of form and more

especially of content approximates more nearly to the profundity of Sebastiano’s manner than to the superficiality of Peruzzi’s. Notwithstanding its incongruity in the scheme of things of which it has become a part and the lack of unanimity as to whether it should be accepted as a preliminary sketch by Peruzzi or, as it were, a Parthian shot by Sebastiano, no more impressive tribute to its quality as a work of art could be afforded than the fact that it was not obliterated and has always been retained if not specifically, at any rate inadvertently to confound and to perplex the critics and art historians of succeeding generations.

However, according to Michael Hirst,?? who was able to inspect the work from the scaffolding while it was in restauro during the early 70s, the matter has now been settled ‘unequivocally’ in favour of Baldassare Peruzzi, by reason of the alleged discovery of his initials in

Oo

Chapter II the form of a monogram, placed slightly to the left of the head at the top of the lunette. In these apparently random paint strokes, which can be clearly seen in a good reproduction, he claims to have discovered a capital P with the addition of dots to indicate the lower loop of the B. In neither case are the letters more than vaguely suggested, but even if this interpretation were less dubious than is in fact the case, there are certain other objections that would make it

difficult to accept Hirst’s reading. Firstly, is it not rather an odd place in which to have put initials for whatever purpose and secondly, is it likely that initials would have been used, seeing that in the sixteenth century people were not known by their surnames, as we are today, but were generally called by their baptismal names? Or, when not known simply as Messer Michelangelo or Messer Tommaso, as the case might be,* were distinguished by their places of origin, like Desiderio

da Settingnano,

and

Giovanni

da Udine

and

on

the

comparatively rare occasions when they signed their works artists did so in such forms as Sebastianu(s) Ven., and in Peruzzi’s case as Bal.

Senen. Again, although incontrovertible documentary evidence must take precedence over purely stylistic considerations, strong stylistic evidence must be preferred to conjectural readings of debatable initials, the discovery of which finds no mention in Almamaria Tantillo’s} account of the work of restoration carried out in the Sala di Galatea. A final objection to attributing the work to Peruzzi resides in the fact that while on occasion Sebastiano’s drawings and Michelangelo’s have sometimes been confused, there has never been any confusion between Peruzzi’s work and that of the great Florentine. Significantly enough, the Colossal Head is the one example adduced by A. M. Lecoqt to exemplify /a signature-ductus, in support of which she quotes the earlier of the two anecdotes, which became current during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in order to account for the anomaly of its presence in a decorative scheme to which it bears no relationship. There are several versions of the story, the earliest of which dates from 1633 and originated in Spain,§ but all of which bear witness to the sense of spontaneity that

the work conveys. In brief, it was said by some to be by Michelangelo ‘who sought to rebuke Raphael for the smallness of his figures’ and was of such power that it could be by no one else; and by others to be by Daniele da Volterra ‘who sought to distract himself while waiting * When not known by nicknames such as Sodoma, II Tribolo, ete. | In Bolletino d’Arte, 1972. p. 33 et seq. + In Revue d'Art, 1974, p. 15 et seq.

§ Vincincio Carducho: Dialogos de la Pintur, 1633, p. 76.

60

Concerning ‘The Concert’

for Michelangelo at the Farnesina’. Both are manifestly absurd, since it is $0 likely that Michelangelo would have had the energy, the leisure or the inclination to indulge in a caprice so wholly out of character, at a time when he was engaged on the last stages of the Sistine vault and working in his own words ‘harder than any man who ever lived’. Alternatively is it to be believed that the linette remained undecorated and the scaffolding in position until such time as Daniele should be old enough and clever enough in an idle moment to create a work ‘surpassing the brush of Raphael’ and deemed to be not unworthy of Michelangelo himself, since at the relevant period Daniele was only three years of age? But nobody thinks! Would not Wolfflin therefore appear to be justified when he averred that ‘if side by side with the two great masters, Raphael and Michelangelo, another had the right to be nominated as the third it would be Sebastiano del Piombo’? It must be confessed that to relate a wall painting now commonly, if implausibly given to Peruzzi, to an easel painting now commonly, if implausibly given to Titian, in order to prove that both are by Sebastiano, would appear, on the face of it, to be a somewhat dubious exercise. In the case of the Farnesina head we have already shown that on purely stylistic grounds the presumption must be in favour of Sebastiano. But what of The Concert? Here, too, Sebastiano’s

signature is, in a manner

of speaking,

writ large, no matter whether the picture be analysed in respect of its technical idiosyncrasies or contemplated with reference to its aesthetic content. As in nearly all his compositions his sitters are here narrowly confined and would not be appreciably less so if the third figure were eliminated and the canvas reduced to its original size. This overcrowding of half-length figures into spaces barely adequate for their containment is not, of course, peculiar to Sebastiano, but is common

to other Renaissance painters, including Titian, though his figures tend on the whole to be slightly less cramped than Sebastiano’s. As an example of this, two closely allied paintings may be quoted, namely, Sebastiano’s portrait of Cardinal Ferry Carondelet and his Secretaries, in the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection, and Titian’s portrait of Georges d’Armagnac, Bishop of Rodez and his Secretary, Guillaume Philandrier at Alnwick Castle. Both are oddly and, one may think, unnecessarily circumscribed, but the latter, the finer piece, marginally less so than the former. When writing in eulogistic terms of the Duke of Northumberland’s picture, which he identified in 1965, Michael Jaffé95 was at pains to emphasize that ‘nobody but Titian in his maturity was capable of such an invention. None but he could have realized pictorially the relationship between the dignity of the prin-

30 31

61

Chapter IT cipal personage and the intelligent alertness of the secretary’. But in all fairness, if credit is really to be given to anyone for what is here claimed to be an artistic innovation, it should surely be given, not to Titian, but to Sebastiano, whose triple portrait anticipated Titian’s double portrait by at least two decades—which only goes to show how prejudicial on occasion ‘the introduction of a major name’ would appear to be. In Michelangelo’s estimation and according to Sebastiano’s own remark to Vasari,?° “Titian, the best master of our day for his imitation of natural tints, would have produced stupendous things’ had he not lacked ‘that foundation of great draughtsmanship’, which obliged him, in common with other Venetian painters of his era “to conceal his inability to draw by the splendour of his colouring’. To this stricture on the shortcomings of the Venetians—mainly, it was thought, owing to their want of contact with the great masters in Rome and with the classical prototypes by which they were surrounded—Sebastiano was not subject. For although his perspective may not always be correct, this does not amount to defective drawing in the sense in which Titian is undeniably and all too frequently at fault. With his superior draughtsmanship, in addition to his instinetive feeling for colour, Sebastiano might even be thought to have had

the advantage, were it not that the two paimters, themselves so essentially different, not only by temperament and endowment, but also in respect of the patronage they enjoyed, are rather to be contrasted than compared. From the time that he became official painter to the Venetian Republic early in his career and throughout a life devoted to the service to the great, including the Emperor, Charles V, Titian, unlike Sebastiano,

who

was

less ambitious,

always

maintained

a large

bottega and employed a number of assistants. His range was therefore wider and his oewvre on an altogether grander scale. Though intrinsically less original than Sebastiano his inventiveness was greater, though less eclectic he was more versatile, though the sensuous appeal of his work is stronger, its mtellectual impact is less stimulating,

though the spectacle is more impressive, the drama is less intense. So that while it is not pretended that Sebastiano would have been capable of the glowing splendour of the Assumption of the Virgin in the church of 5S. Maria dei Frari or of the subtle enchantment of the Sacred and Profane Love in the Galleria Borghese, neither would he have lent himself to the lewd ineptitude of Venus and the Organ Player in the Prado or of the banal inadequacies of the Death of Acteon (£1,763,000 notwithstanding) in the National Gallery.

Happily for himself (and perhaps also for the patrons whom he did

62

Concerning ‘The Concert’

not serve)

Sebastiano,

not being a court painter, was

under no

obligation to satisfy the wayward fancies and erotic whims of patrons as exigent as they were imperious. He therefore contrived to maintain his independence and as he grew older, particularly after his appointment to the Office of Piombatore in 1531, tended to work only when he felt inclined, being of the opinion that ‘it is wiser to live at ease than to exhaust one’s self for the sake of a reputation after death’. Not so Titian, who laboured on to the end of a long life, albeit ill-advisedly in Vasari’s view, ‘as he would have done better in his later years had he worked only for his own amusement, instead of releasing works that may be damaging to the reputation he gained in his prime’. With this opinion most (though by no means all) modern critics would emphatically disagree. One of the impediments encountered when seeking to assess Titian’s true merits as a portraitist arises from the number of replicas, particularly of the royal portraits, that were executed in the studio, to which in many cases little more than the finishing touches, if as much,

were contributed by the master himself, so that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between a titivated copy and an original. Another confusing factor inheres in the sixteenth century practice of executing historical and ancestral portraits, sometimes based only upon medals and sometimes upon impaired or indifferent likenesses of the deceased, as for example in Bronzino’s Medici series and in Titian’s own renderings of defunct, doges, popes and queens. In the case of the one no vital test of the artist’s powers was provided; in the case of the other inequalities in the work inevitably resulted. It seems, however, that Titian had no objection to these demands being made upon his abilities nor upon his willingness to portray those, even among the living, who had not sat to him. For it is noteworthy that it

was to the success of his copy of Jacob Seisenegger’s portrait of Charles V with a Hound that he owed his appointment as portraitistin-ordinary to the Emperor. His facility in this respect may even have been an asset, since at no time, even later on, can the sittings granted

him either by Charles V or by his son, Philip II, have been other than few and far between. It is therefore only to be expected that portraits such as these should be lacking in animation. At the same time it must be admitted that even his less formal portraits, more particularly the early ones, often tend towards the bland, not in the sense that his sitters would not be immediately recognizable, but in the sense that as personalities they are insufficiently revealed. To this general stricture there are, of course, a number of notable exceptions, among which two contrasted examples may be quoted: the brilliantly aggressive ‘Scourge

of Princes’,

Pietro

Aretino,

in which

all the arrogant

33 63

Chapter IT effrontery of the man 32

is exhibited,

and the youthful Ranuccio

Farnese, in his robes as a Knight of Malta, of all Titian’s portraits,

perhaps the most graceful and the most appealing. By and large, however, he was too prolific a painter to have been able to enter into the subtler aspects of his sitters’ being, in a way possible for a painter of deeper psychological insight, like Sebastiano, upon whom fewer demands were made. The difference between what might be described as the extrovert,

39 34

as opposed to the introvert approach to the subject matter of a picture, the histrionic, as opposed to the dramatic interpretation of a theme, is vividly illustrated in the contrast between Titian’s Ecce Homo in Vienna and Sebastiano’s Raising of Lazarus in London. The first, despite the poorness of the composition and the nature of the occasion might be almost decorative in intention, being encumbered

with extraneous detail to the point of absurdity; whereas the second is charged with meaning, being marvellously organized and free of irrelevancies. The former is the objective presentation of an historical event, conceived in contemporary terms; the latter a re-creation of a fully-imagined event conceived in terms almost of a personal experience. Here, in contradistinction to Titian’s posturing figures, the whole concourse, with all the varying reactions of a throng, is centred upon the miracle, by which every shade of belief and disbelief, from awe to scepticism, is engendered. Yet while each participant remains absorbed to a greater or lesser extent in his own reaction to the event,

the unity of the whole is ensured by an awareness of intercommunication.

37 38

64

Over and above its dramatic content, the Raising of Lazarus exemplifies a number of other virtues that we associate pre-eminently with Sebastiano—a pervading serieta and figures characterized by their nobility of bearing, eloquent gestures and beautiful hands. In the sculpturesque figure in the foreground to the left, who stoops with an innate compassion to unloose the grave clothes, we are also afforded a singularly striking example of that sense of profound concentration by which, as we have already seen, Sebastiano is peculiarly distinguished. It is largely from this quality of profound inwardness, in which a feeling both of strength and weight is comprehended, that Sebastiano’s figures derive their authority. This is true not only of those in his religious pictures, among which such superb examples as the Holy Family with S. John the Baptist and Donor and the Descent of Christ into Limbo may be cited, but also of his portraiture, in which, above all, he was held by his contemporaries to excel. The precise meaning of Vasari’s®’ statement that it was by reason

Concerning ‘The Concert’

of the finezza e bonta, meaning perhaps by the subtlety and intrinsic quality of his portraiture, that Sebastiano surpassed all others, partially eludes us. But from the context in which the passage occurs we may surmise that he was referring to that gift of empathy which Sebastiano unquestionably possessed. By this means he was able, at his best, so to identify himself with his sitters that they convey the impression, not so much of being observed from without, as looking

out upon the world from within, in the full conviction of the reality of their own existence. Credibility is given to this interpretation by a further comment made by Vasari in connection with the much eulogized portrait of Anton Francesco degli Albizzi, when he said that the sitter ‘appeared not to be painted, but to be very much alive— vivissimo’. This portrait, of which the head and the hands were reputed to be ‘truly marvellous, not to mention the excellence of the velvets, linings, satins and all the other parts of the picture’, though not certainly so identified, is now generally thought to be that of A Gentleman in the Kress Collection, Houston.

Like Michelangelo, with whom he was intimately associated for many years, Sebastiano was always fascinated by details—the fastenings and finishings of a dress, the fur trimmings

of a robe, the

embellishments of veils and headdresses, the pattern of a carpet— over all of which he always took immense pains, though without allowing the parts to intrude upon the whole, to which they invariably remain subordinate. As already mentioned, his ability to distinguish in his pictures between five or six different blacks, ‘as of velvet, satin, sarcenet, damask, broadcloth and beards’ was also considered to be remarkable, but is no more so than his startling handling of white,

which is unforgettably exemplified in his Descent of Christ into Limbo,* one of the supreme, albeit unproclaimed, masterpieces of the late Italian Renaissance. Incidentally, this great painting was very probably among those purchased by Velasquez for the enrichment of the Spanish royal collections during his visit to Italy for this purpose between 1648 and 1651. It was placed in the Sacristy of the Monastery of S. Lorenzo in the Escorial by command of Philip IV in 1656, where it remained until 1837 when it was transferred to the

Prado. In all Sebastiano’s pictures, in the portraits no less than in his religious paintings and other compositions, certain stylistic characteristics and tendencies persist. His figures, though generally cramped, are fully conceived

in the round;

the heads

and the hands

are

powerfully and beautifully modelled; the pupils are almost invariably * No reproduction, however good, begins to do justice to this work.

65

Chapter II unlit, but, as if to compensate, the whites of the eyes are strongly accentuated; the growth of the hair is carefully studied and such minor facial blemishes as there may have been are included. In other words, he treated his sitters, not as models, but as individuals. His

attention to detail and the depth and overall harmony of his colour have already been remarked, but if there are two technical characteristics that may be said to differentiate his work from that of his contemporaries, they are the warmth of his golden-bronze flesh tones and the subtlety of his leaden shadows. These leaden or olive shadows, which afford so sharp a contrast to the brown shadows we associate with Titian have always provided, if not conclusive evidence in favour of any attribution to Sebastiano, at least a salient argument,

when in other respects a work might confidently be presumed to be by his hand. For reasons that are easier to recognize than to define, Sebastiano’s particular quality has always had a special appeal for the French. In a sales catalogue compiled in Paris in 1823 and unusually well

annotated by the artist and valuer, P. Roux,?® he began by remarking

that Sebastiano, who combined the beauty of Giorgione’s colour with the strength of Michelangelo’s draughtsmanship, might himself have become a second Michelangelo had he worked harder and been less given to indulging his passion for poetry and music. Roux then continued more specifically and at some length. “One constantly marvels’, he wrote, ‘and with reason, at the fineness of his manner

dS 39

66

and the grandeur of his forms. The impasto and depth of his colour seem to contribute still further to infusing them with that appearance of power and of life that reveals an ability perhaps beyond that of any other artist in Italy. In short, to give an idea of Sebastiano’s reputation and abilities it is surely enough to say that he felt himself equal to disputing the palm of painting with the great Raphael and that .. . even today one finds connoisseurs who declare themselves in favour of the Lazarus {in competition with Raphael’s, Transfiguration] yet without having to blush for their preference’. At the turn of the century much the same opinion was expressed by Wolfflin, who averred that ‘as a painter of portraits Sebastiano stood in the very first rank and in historical pictures achieved now and again powerful effects comparable only to those of Michelangelo’.?? The terms in which Venturi!°° spoke of his portraiture are similarly eulogistic. For just as Vasari when referring to the incomparable portrait of Baccio Valori had not hesitated to describe it as being ‘beautiful beyond belief’, so Venturi when discussing the commanding portrait of Andrea Doria went so far as to say that ‘among all the portraits of the cunquecento perhaps no other approaches more nearly

Concerning ‘The Concert’

to the ideal of heroic grandeur envisaged by Michelangelo’ than this

inscrutable figure, who, ‘isolated within the compass

of his own

thoughts’ remains forever inaccessible in the monumental dignity of a pose that is at once imperious in intention and statuesque in effect. Of the strong three-dimensional character of Sebastiano’s work no one was more sensible than Venturi, who reverts once more to the solidity and incisiveness of his forms in another passage, in which he contended that ‘even more than in his religious pictures Sebastiano’s electicism declares itself in his portraits, in which a firm and powerful monumentality

is achieved,

as may

be seen, for instance, in the

portrait of Clement VII in the Gallery in Naples, which is conceived in sculptural terms with a breadth that makes us aware of its affinity

76

with the art of Buonarroti’. If, therefore, Michelangelo was right when

he maintained that ‘the nearer painting approximates to relief the better it is and the nearer relief approximates to painting the worse it

is’,!°1 then by this criterion alone Sebastiano’s merits as a painter would appear to be amply attested. For to the forms of no other painter is the epithet ‘sculptural’ more frequently or more aptly applied. The concurrence of critical opinion among the élite as to the nature and quality of Sebastiano’s achievement is still further borne out by their /ack of unanimity as to which among certain drawings should be attributed to Michelangelo and which to him—a dilemma that, in view of Michelangelo’s undisputed pre-eminence, serves yet again to emphasize the affinities that exist between them and the consequent presumption of greatness in Sebastiano’s performance. As a penultimate consideration it may not be inappropriate to quote an extract from a letter written in 1543 that bears out much of what has already been said. It occurs in a letter to Sebastiano from the humanist, Claudio Tolomei,!92 when he wished to avail himself of the painter’s desire that he should sit to him for his portrait. The passage is important, partly because it constitutes an expression of contemporary opinion* privately communicated, partly because it bears witness

to the cathartic

effect of great art as such, though here

experienced not in actuality, but in anticipation and from the unusual standpoint of a man who, at one and the same time, conceived himself in the dual role of sitter and spectator. After a short digression, having spoken of the works of Sebastiano’s hand which ‘ravish the eyes, delight the soul and nourish the intellect to the wonder of the learned and the amazement

of the ignorant’,

Tolomei then went on— * Although by modern standards the tone of adulation may seem excessive, it was not so by those prevailing in the sixteenth century.

67

Chapter IT If I obtain this favour* (as I hope) it will seem to me henceforth that I have acquired a mirror that I shall always call a divine mirror, because in it I shall see you and me together. ... And seeing myself vividly portrayed by your art will provide me with a continual stimulus to purge my soul of its many defects, and seeing therein the illuminating rays of your genius (virti) will kindle in my soul a noble longing for glory and honour.

To say of any work of art that ‘the intense vitality of the principal sitter is unsurpassed in the whole history of art’,!°° is inevitably to place it in a category of its own and to argue the realization of a measure of creative insight unlikely to be attained a second time in the oeuvre of any artist, however, richly endowed. Accordingly, all that we can look for, in the absence of an equivalent achievement in an artist’s work, is a comparable spirit and an identical manner. These are only to be found, during the relevant period, in Sebastiano, himself a musician as well as a painter, whose art is informed by a spirit that approximates more nearly than that of any of his contemporaries, to the inspiration of The Concert, while, in addition, the

stylistic arguments in his favour are irrefutable. All the salient traits detailed above are clearly in evidence—the sculptural feeling for form, the exquisitely modelled features and expressive hands, the unlit pupils and accentuated whites of the eyes, the well-characterized head of the priest (its somewhat impaired condition notwithstanding), the accurate renderings of his garments, the warmth of the golden flesh tones and the olive shadows. ‘No figure is worthy of praise’, wrote Leonardo da Vinci, !® ‘unless the action that appears in it serves to express the passion of the soul’.

If this be so, then no figure in the whole range of Italian Renaissance portraiture is more worthy to be praised than the cembalo player in The Concert, in whose tensed hands and impassioned countenance the soul of the musician is enshrined.

* As far as we know the portrait was not executed.

68

Reference Notes to Chapter II VENTURI Adolfo Storia dell Arte Italiana Milan, 1928

Florence, 1878-1883

IX, Pt. 3, p. 48 passim

VENTURI A. Op. cit. IX, Pt. 3, p. 4

IV, p. 96 et seq.

VENTURI Lionello Giorgione e il Giorgionismo Milan, 1913

10.

pp. 29-32

RICHTER G. M. Giorgio da Castelfranco Chicago, 1937

MICHIEL Marcantonio Notizia d’Opera del Disegno ed. Frimmel, Vienna, 1888 RIDOLFI Carlo Le Maraviglie dell’Arte Venice, 1648 a a

MARIETTE

Al.

PIGNATTI T. Giorgione trans. Clovis Whitfield London, 1971 p. 94 et seq.

12.

CROWE & CAVALCASELLE A History of Painting in North Italy Ed. Tancred Borenius.

Pierre Jean

Recueil d’Estampes d’apres les plus beaux

tableaux

London, 1912.

et les plus beaux

dessins qui sont en France dans le Cabinet du Roy, dans celui de Monseigneur le Duc d'Orléans d’autres Cabinets Paris, 1729 No. 33

et dans

III, p. 25

13.

p. 363 tee.

FOMICIEVA T. The History of Giorgione’s ‘Judith’ and its Restoration

MORELLI lieff)

Giovanni

(Ivan Lermo-

Italian Painters trans. G. J. Foulkes London, 1892/3

in

The Burlington Magazine July 1973

VENTURI L. Op. cit.

II, p. 213 et seq. 15.

VENTURI A. Op. cit. IX, Pins px 209

16.

SUIDA W. Le Titien Paris, 1935 p. 30

lie

VASARI Giorgio

LONGHI R. Viatico per cinque secoli di Pittura Veneziana

Le Vite de‘piu Eccellenti Pittori Ed. G. Milanesi

Florence, 1946 pac

p. 417 et seq.

FIOCCO Giuseppe Giorgione Bergamo, 1941 p- a0

See also VENTURI Op. cit.

L.

p. 36 et seq.

69

Chapter IT 18.

TIETZE Hans

28.

Titian London, 1950

p. 12 19,

p. 114 et seq.

PALLUCCHINI Ridolfo

29.

Tiziano Florence, 1969

BRAGARD Anne-Marie Verdelot en Italie in Revue Belge de Musicologie, 1957 IX, fas. 3, 4, p. 109 et seq.

DELLA PERGOLA Paola Giorgione Milan, 1955 p. 62

ai.

For the life of Verdelot see the following:

I, p. 24 20.

HOURTICQ Louis Le Probleme de Giorgione Paris, 1930

BERENSON Bernard Pitture Italiane del Rinascimento Milan, 1936 p. 490

BRAGARD Anne-Marie Philippe Verdelot in Encyclopedie de la Musique, 1961 Il

FIOCCO Guiseppe Guiorgione Bergamo, 1948 p. 38

BRAGARD Anne-Marie Etude Biographique sur Verdelot in Académie

23.

p. 128 ae

30.

TIETZE-CONRAT E. Titian’s Portrait of Paul IIT in Gazette des Beaux Arts 1946 Series 6, V. 29, p. 83 FRIEDEBERG Max Uber ‘Das Konzert’ im Palazzo Pitti in

I, p. 246 et seq.

31.

p. 169 et seq.

NAUMANN

70

VASARI Giorgio Op. cit. VY; peo6s

Emil

trans. F. Praeger London, 1882 Lp.370

1971

I, p. 91 286

CAFFI Francesco Musica Sacra Venice, 1855 pet

History of Music

WETHEY H. E. The Paintings of Titian London,

la Belgique,

DONI Antonfrancesco I Marmi Florence, 1865

This work was Venice in 1552

Zeitschrift fur Bildende Kunst 1917 206.

de

1964 No. 1754, Series 2, fas. 1, p. 1 et seq.

ZAMPETTI Pietro Guorgione e t Giorgioneschi Venice, 1955

Royale

Philippe

33.

CAFFI Francesco

Op. cit. Il, p. 41

first published

in

Reference Notes 34.

FREY H. W. Regesten zur papstlichen Kapelle unter Leo X und zu seiner Privatkapelle in Die Mustkforschung 1956

IX, p. 144

3d.

40.

MESCHELLINO Giovanni La Chiesa di S. Marco Venice, 1753 IIL, p. 35

41.

VENTURI A. Op. cit. IX, Pt. Sys 210

For the publications of Verdelot’s music see the following:

EITNER Robert Bibliographie der Musik—Sammelwerke des XVI und XVII Jahrunderts Berlin, 1877

p. 899

DONI Antonfrancesco

Op. cit. I, p. 246 et seq. 43.

ing:

EITNER Robert Quellen-Lexikon Musikgelehrten Leipzig, 1904

der

Mustker

GROVE George Op. cit. VI, p. 169 et seq.

und

Xp. of.

VOGEL E Biblioteca della

Musica

genere

Stampata

profano

Vocale

(i) MURRAY Bain Jacob Obrecht in La Revue Belge de Musicologie,

di

1500-

(ii) MURRAY Bain New Light on Jacob Obrecht’s Development—A Biographical Study

GROVE George Dictionary of Music and Musicians

in The Musical 1957 p. 900 et seq.

London, 1954

p..727

BARTOLI Cosimo Ragtonamenti Accademici p. 37 et seq.

Ill, p. 181 aa

Princeton, 1949

PIRRO André

Obrecht a Cambrai

I, pp. 248, 257

in Tydschrift, Amsterdam, 1928 XII, p. 78

LANDO Ortenzio Sette Libri de Cathaloghi Venice, 1552

p. 510 MORONI Gaetano Dizionario dt Erudizione Ecclesiastico Venice, 1841 VII, p. 80

October,

New York, 1969

EINSTEIN Alfred The Italian Madrigal

39.

Quarterly

STRAETEN Edmond Van der Musique aux Pays-Bas

Venice, 1567

38.

1957

p. 125 et seq.

Graz, 1959 Te pi299

36.

For the life of Obrecht see the follow-

45.

MURRAY Bain Op. cit. (i1) p. 510 (Original text and facsimile)

46.

MURRAY Bain Op. cit. (1) p. 506

Storico-

71

Chapter II 47.

STRAETEN

Do.

Edmond Van der

Op. cit. p. 186 48.

V, p. 565

56.

FRIZZI Antonio Memorie per la Storia di Ferrara Ed. Camillo Laderchi Ferrara, 1848, 2nd Ed.

Ill, p. 216 49.

MURRAY Bain Op. cit. (i) p. 133

50.

AARON Pietro Libri Tres de Institutione Harmonica Bologna, 1516

BELLONCI Marie Lucrezia Borgia—La t Suot Tempi Milan, 1952

Sua

Vita

e

pp. 717, 716

For musical lowing:

see the fol-

references

BERTOLOTTI

58.

ZAMBOTTI Bernardino Diario Ferrarese Ed. G. Pardi Bologna, 1934/37 p. 78

(Being t.24, vu of L. A. Muratori’s Rerum Italicarum Scriptores)

a

VERNARECCI D. Augusto (1) Ottaviano dei Petrucci da Fossombone

SARTORI Claudio (1) Ottaviano dei Petrucci Florence, 1948

29.

RUHEMANN Helmut The Cleaning of Paintings London, 1968 pp. 206, 137

60.

CENNINI CENNINO (1) The Book of Art of ...{Il Libro dell Arte o Tratatto della Pittura| trans. Christiana J. Herringham

RODDI P. Annali di Ferrara p. 75

dei Gonzaga

Bologna, 2nd Ed. 1882

VI, c. 161

Harlem MS. 3311 (British Museum)

A. Corte

Milan, 1890

FRIZZI Antonio Op. cit. p. 219 SANUDO Marius T Diarw Venice, 1899/1903

34.

de Florence

Musica alla Mantova

CITTADELLA, Luigi Napoleone Notizie relative a Ferrara Ferrara, 1864

53.

reliefs et

Camées de la Galerie e du Pitti Palais Paris, 1804 IIL.

LAZZARI Alfonzo La Musica alla Corte dei Duchi di Ferrara Ferrara 1928

pp. 440, 300 52.

WICAR Jean Baptiste Tableaux, Statues, Bas

CANAL Pietro Della Musica in Mantova Venice, 1881

p. 30 o1.

VASARI Giorgio Op. cit.

London,

1899

CHURCH A. H. (i) The Chemistry of Paint Painting London,

1890

and

Reference Notes 61.

iar

WETHEY R. E. Op. cit. p. 92

62.

63.

pp. 136, 213

EINSTEIN Alfred Op. cit. I, p. 155 et seq.

GAMURRINI E. Historia Genealogica delle Famiglie Nobili Toscane e Umbrie Florence, 1673 III, p. 336

BURCKHARDT Jacob The Civilization of the Renaissance London, 1944

72.

p. 239 64.

65.

VENTURI A. Op. cit. IX, Pt. 3. p. 471

3.

BOSCHINI Marco La Carta del Navegar Pitoresco 1st Edition Venice, 1660 2nd Edition ed. Anna Pallucchini, Venice-Rome, 1966 Note The page nos. where given in the text refer to the 2nd edition.

HES

CIARANFIT Anna Maria Francini La Galleria Pitti Florence, 1956

RICHTER G. M. Op. cit.

SCHUBRING Paul Die Kunst der Hochrenaissance Italien Berlin, 1926 p. 70

FONDAZIONE GIORGIO CINI La Civilta Veneziana del Rinascimento Florence, 1958

Cronologia Veneziana dal ’600

p. 217

66.

MEGATTI G. M. Storia Genealogica della Nobilita e Cittadenza di Firenze Naples, 1754

in

p. 169 67.

FRIEDEBERG Max Op. cit. Pt. IV

68.

BAINES Anthony Musical Instruments: I NonKeyboard Instruments in the Victoria & Albert Museum London, 1968

p. 2 69.

VASARI Giorgio Op. cit. V. p. 566

76.

BORGHINI Raffaello Il Riposo Milan 1807 II, p. 259

MER

RIDOLFI Carlo

Op. cit. I, p. 81

POPE-HENNESSEY John

Portrait Sculptures by Ridolfo Sirigatti in The Victoria & Albert Museum Bulletin April 1965

BRUNETTI Mario Una strana interpretazione del Concerto della Galleria Pitti in Rivista di Venezia, 1935

p. 121 et seq. 70.

79.

No. 2. p. 33 78.

MARCHESI Giorgio Viviano La Galleria d’Onore del

Sacro

Ordine Militario di S. Stefano Forli, 1735

I, p. 350

73

Chapter I 79.

BALDINUCCI Filippo

85.

Notizie dei Professori del Disegno Ed. F. Ranelli Florence, 1646

V, p. 346 80.

For

Pietro

Muttoni

della

VERCI Giambattista Notizie intorno alle Vite e alle Opere di Pittori... della Citta di Bassano Venice, 1775 p. 224

Vecchia

1603-1678 see the following: BOSCHINI Marco Op. cit. p. 304 passim

DONIZELLI Carlo I Pittori del Seicento Veneto Florence, 1967

SAVINI BRANCA Simona Il Collezionismo Veneziano nel’ 600 Padua 1964

p. 93

p. 370

86.

MURANO Michelangelo 87.

Saggi e Memorie di Storia dell’Arte 1965

IV, p. 71

81.

For Nicolé

Renieri

1590-1667

88. 89.

Op. cit. pp. 346, 567

90. Simona

Op. cit. pp. 02, 53, 264

ed. Anna Pallucchini

p. 709 PALLUCCHINI Anna

1966

Op. cit. p. xlvii

SAVINI BRANCA

Op. cit. p. 69

(4

BOSCHINI Marco

Simona

(1) RAMSDEN E. H. Letters of Michelangelo London, 1963 I, p. 160

Firenze, 1973

Ill, pp. 156, 147

Reprinted in La Carta del Navegar

84.

Op. cit. p. Ix

(11) BAROCCHI PAOLA E RENZO RISTORI Il Carteggio di Michelangelo

BOSCHINI Marco ‘Breve Instruzione —Premessa a ‘Le Ricche Minere della Pittura Veneziana’ 1674

83.

BOSCHINI Marco

B. I. op. cit. p. 710

BOSCHINI Marco

SAVINI BRANCA

BOSCHINI Marco

Op. cit. p. Xi, n. 6

see

the following:

SAVINI BRANCA Simona Op. cit. p. 277

Studios, Collezionisti e Opere d’Arte Veneta... in

THIEME U. und BECKER F. Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Kunstler Leipzig, 1907 Ill, p. 1

91.

VASARI Giorgio Op. cit. V, p. 565

92.

BIAGIO P. Sopra la Vita di F. Sebastiano in

Esercitazioni Scientifiche e Letterarie dell’Atenco di Venezia Venice, 1827

Reference Notes HERMANIN Frederico La Farnesina Bergamo, 1927 pp. 47, 48 PALLUCCHINI Op. cit. p. 32

VASARI Giorgio Op. cit. V, p. 575

98.

ROUX P. Catalogue d’une Riche et Nombreuse Collection de Tableaux

Ridolfo

GERLINI Elsa La Villa Farnesina Rome, 1947 pe iid (Also for the two above)

93.

ot

HIRST Michael, Piombo London, 1981

Paris, 1823 p. 97

oo

Op. cit. p. 141 anecdotes

Sebastiano

cited 100.

VENTURI A. Op. cit. IX, Pt. V, p. 64 et seq.

101.

RAMSDEN Op. cit. IE pa

102.

TOLOME!I Claudio Delle Lettere Venice, 1549

del

p. 33 O53.

WOLFFLIN Heinrich The Art of the Italian Renaissance London, 1903 p- 142

95.

WOLFFLIN Heinrich

E. H.

p. 95 et seq

JAFFE Michael 103.

VENTURI L. Giorgione Rome, 1954 p. 02

104. VASARI Giorgio

MacCURDY Edward The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci

Op. cit.

London, 1945

VIL p. 447

II, p. 266

Titian Double Portrait in The Burlington Magazine March 1966 p: 114

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Giorgione, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

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THE THREE AGES OF MAN,

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13

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Victoria & Albert Museum, London

85

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Variously attributed, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

26

THE CEMBALO PLAYER

(detail ofNo. 25)

27

THE YOUNG MAN

(detail ofNo. 25)

28

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43

PORTRAIT OF A CARDINAL AND AN OFFICIAL, Variously attributed,

National Gallery, London

44

DOCUMENT AND INKPOT

(detail of No. 43)

45

BULL OF CLEMENT VII,

Public Record Office, pale

; Te purus w ube mac confEche battens play eonencan ‘Caan rae Aa Canffine (Neuse opie Dee

© | Wanfkse bemque Fancze prefeant ac cos Wale ctopenbue vio Rice coum gloat vena Ware’ | flac ean Regraw20. ce berewmn acrenee quacany cance CSWarerce: Elgin ce Cechhm preci fae atte comics labene pro uta co cute (Emo zencunta pepenling oom mamplanme of conlermanmeluabus (meKe cor Geman fimene auwihe rroldmane of the Cpwarons Cece tne celteuemie filene recheie uyobmilfe (PerenueDalberabe office reife neesgrine grollean aca Premmad Vice Prem gfanche convicma MionEMAL Ache GuInat dtLomearu Cancirreorm penn

or LETT

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ui ~—Aune

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46

SIGNATURE OF M. BRACCI

extra plicam (detail of No. 43)

SIGNATURE OF IPPOLITO DE’MEDICI (detail of No. 43)

a, O PWa

Levys,

( Ar

yks Soe Me “*

|

.

) fe Pmrapae

Wibrneaf ae

[- ans

fF

pin drt, oo

bb. Kandel, 48

Net

yi

a

/

o ene

SIGNATURE OF M. BRACCI infra plicam Papal Bull, May 1533 Lambeth Palace Library, London

1Z9

.

49

SALA RIARIA

Vice Chancellor with the Regent and Abbreviators Jo. Ciampini; De Abbreviatorium ... 1691

50

A DOORWAY

Photograph

130

IN THE SALA RIARIA

51

HEAD OF SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO Wood engraving Vasari... Vite 1568

52

THE OFFICIAL

(detail ofNo. 40)

151

PORTRAIT OF IPPOLITO DE MEDICI, Titian, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

132

y Concerning a ‘lost’ Portrait of a Lady

Ata consistory held on 21st June 1532 Clement VII confirmed the appointment of his kinsman, the brilliant and versatile Ippolito de’Medici, as legate to Germany and Hungary.! His nomination, made with special reference to the defence of Christendom against the Turk, had been welcomed by the Emperor, Charles V, who, having less reason than the Pope to be perturbed by the young Cardinal’s wholly secular way of life, encouraged his prowess as a soldier, which, if rumour

may

be believed, can scarcely have accorded

53

with Cle-

ment’s original intention. Although some were of the opinion that in making the appointment he sought to placate the Cardinal, whom he had raised to the purple much against his will at the age of eighteen three years previously; others were inclined to think differently. In a letter to his brother, Federigo, Duke of Mantua,

dated 23rd June

1532, Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga expressed the view that the Pope, being desperately anxious to wean him from the kind of life he was leading in Rome, hoped, by sending him to Germany, to subject him to the discipline of the Emperor which was known to be both both strict and stern.* A prince by nature, a humanist by inclination, a man of letters poetically endowed and a musician capable of playing any instrument put into his hands, Ippolito happened also to be enamoured of the lady Giulia Gonzaga, the most beautiful woman in Italy—and not only in Italy according to Marcantonio Magno, her personal representative to the Court of Charles V, who deemed her more beautiful

than any woman

he had ever seen in Italy, France, Germany or

Spain.”

Hence, upon his nomination as legate, the Cardinal immediately

* Io per me dico che la potissima [causa] sia stata la desperazione del Papa dt rimoverlo mai delle vita che tiene senza mandarlo alla disciplina del Imperatore, la quale é grave e severa. (Pastor: History of the Popes, X, p. 503.)

133

Chapter V 40

the portrait in question is that of a lady, sumptuously attired in gold-tinted brocade and a fur-lined, ribbon-threaded mantle, which came originally from the Villa Negroni in Rome and is now in the Ear! of Radnor’s collection at Longford Castle. But the possibility that this might be the missing masterpiece is ruled out by the nature of the legend on the border of the veil which the lady holds in her right hand. It reads, Laquet Veneris Cave, a legend which would be as unbecoming to an aristocrat of the Lady Giulia’s rank and reputation as it would be appropriate to a cortegiana onesta or hetaira, one of the numerous throng who, as already discussed above played so prominent a part in the social life of Rome during the first half of the sixteenth century. Moreover, the veil which she wears, though somewhat obscured by the darkness of the varnish, is certainly yellow, the colour obligatory for the veil of a courtesan. Under the circumstances the invidious and otherwise debatable question as to whether the model, who is not ashamed to proclaim her profession,* is young enough, fresh enough or beautiful enough to represent the incomparable Giulia at the age of nineteen becomes superfluous. According to a thesis published by Antonio Sorrentino in 1932 and discussed at length by Benedetto Croce in an Appendix to Giovanni de Valdés’ Alfabeto Cristiano,® the portrait executed by Sebastiano in Fondi survives today only in a copy, which is now in the Palazzo Reale at Caserta. Because the Caserta pictures are largely of Farnese provenance, Sorrentino believed the painting to be identical with the reputed portrait of Giulia Gonzaga which Fulvio Orsini, librarian to Cardinal Odoardo Farnese, bequeathed to his patron, together with

oO”

the rest of his collection in 1600. Although Luitpold Dussler’ rejected the Orsini provenance in favour of the Convento di S. Francesco delle Monache? in Naples, where Giulia lived for many years and where she died surrounded by her not inconsiderable household, he remained in substantial agreement with Sorrentino’s findings. Croce likewise endorsed the Caserta identification, in support of which he cites what he believes to be another version of the same picture (though showing the head and shoulders only), a version which Benrath, as long ago as 1900 maintained to be the only authentic likeness. This portrait, which is in the Ambras collection in Vienna and is described as, un ritrattino delle serie Gonsaga, is one of a series at Mantua copied * And why should she have been, seeing that una persona vergognosa nota a Sua Santita figured at a princely salary in the private accounts of P TM? (Fs :

La Cour de Paul III. Paris 1932.)

R

POR

Biting

“Sah etal

} At that time a tertiary foundation. +In addition to her chaplain, she was attended by 3 ladies, 4 female servants, 1 female slave, 2 men servants and 3 pages.

136

Concerning a ‘lost’ Portrait of a Lady between

1579

and 1583

for Anna Caterina Gonzaga, wife of the

Archduke, Ferdinand von Tirol. The work is said to be in condition, as would indeed appear to be the case; yet even so difficult, if not impossible, to believe that the lady portrayed can have been either an outstanding beauty or a personality of distinction.

poor it is ever rare

dS

A third version, not unlike the one in the Palazzo Reale, Caserta,

exists in a private collection in Leipzig and there are, besides, three bust portraits, facing in the opposite direction, which, though they suggest a different prototype, have, nevertheless, been accepted without question as likenesses of the same sitter. The three in question are more probably related to another work, the portrait of a lady standing at a table, attired in Roman dress and a brown mourning veil, which Dussler inclines to think might possibly be the long sought original.* Before it passed via the Stemmayer collection at Cologne into the Martius collection at Kiel, the picture belonged to the Giustiniani—Bandini gallery in Rome, where the lady was said to be, not Giulia Gonzaga, but Vittoria Colonna, who, according to contem-

dd

porary accounts, was not notably good-looking and therefore would not have been particularly belied by the identification. An eighth, and in some respects a more interesting, example belonging to the same series is a three-quarter length portrait of a lady of average appearance in her middle twenties, which was said, again on Sorrentino’s authority,® to be indubitably a portrait of Giulia

oo

Gonzaga. In it she is shown wearing Roman dress, which consisted of

a simply-cut gown, worn without jewellery, but with a light veil, and in this instance

with the addition

of uno

zibellino

a mano,

an

aristocratic accessory in the form of a sable stole draped over the right shoulder and ornamented with a gold animal-head richly embossed. But why, if this were indeed a portrait of Giulia Gonzaga should she be portrayed wearing Roman dress? She was not Roman and was seldom in Rome, except for a short period at the time of her marriage. And why, if the lady belonged by birth to the Gonzaga family and by marriage to the Colonna, should emblematic prominence be given to the Farnese lily which is clearly to be seen on the gold muzzle? Obviously discrepancies such as these permit only of one interpretation, namely, that whoever the lady may be, she is certainly not Giulia Gonzaga. One might even hazard a guess that she may be Vittoria Farnese, daughter of Paul IIL. If that were so, it might even be possible to date the painting to a time shortly before her betrothal to * With this view Hirst is inclined to agree, though he believes it to be a copy (op. cut.

p. 116).

Chapter V 60

Guidobaldo della Rovere, Duke of Urbino whom she married in 1547.

She has the long Farnese nose and somewhat resembles the young girl wearing Roman dress, whose portrait in the National Museum, Budapest has been so identified. The painting of the elder woman was on slate and until its destruction during the hostilities of 1943 had been in the Borghese collection for three centuries. In the inventory of 1693 it was simply described as Portrait of a Lady and was attributed to Sebastiano del Piombo; in the De Rinaldis? inventory of approximately a hundred years later it was similarly described, but was attributed to Bronzino.* Then in 1948, to make a change, or so it would seem, since Federico

Zeri!9 vouchsafed no reasons for his contention, the portrait, now said to be Giulia Gonzaga, was attributed to Jacopino del Conte, an unlikely attribution, but one that was nevertheless accepted by the Borghese Gallery. From this bewildering welter of speculation the only thing that emerges with any certainty is the inconclusiveness of the results. Undeniably, some of the portraits discussed above may belong to an inter-related series, but equally others may not. For while there are obvious resemblances in some cases, in others there are differences of

expression which do not suggest a single prototype, but rather the use of a stock formula, in accordance with which a number of different sitters may have been represented. Be that as it may, it should perhaps be added, anomalous though it may seem, that of the eight portraits in the so-called Gonzaga series, several of which were exhibited in the Mostra Iconografica Gonzaghesca Mantova in 1937, no less than four of the eight pieces have Farnese associations. Two belong to the Palazzo Reale at Caserta, a collection mainly of Farnese origin; one 1s in the Farnese ducal palace at Colorno and has Farnese lihes on the frame; while the one from the Borghese Gallery, which perished during the 1939/46 war, actually featured the Farnese emblem on the embossed gold ornament displayed. *

*

*

*

*

One aspect of the problem that seems to have been overlooked in connection with the foregoing is the ineligibility of any picture to qualify as being either Sebastiano’s lost original, or a copy of it, that does not fulfil two basic conditions. The sitter must be young and * But why Bronzino, who though he worked on copper, does not appear to have used slate?

138

Concerning a ‘lost’ Portrait of a Lady ‘withal of a beautiful countenance’ and the painting in a style and of a quality sufficient to permit of its being acknowledged as a masterpiece by or after Sebastiano. It must, in other words, be such as to accord in some degree at least with the reputed virtues of the sitter and to merit, again within measure, some of the praises lavished upon it in the painter’s lifetime as una pittura divina. With neither of these requirements do the portraits of the supposed Gonzaga series comply. A painting that might seem to fulfil these requirements is a portrait, once attributed to Sebastiano, that is now in the Stadelsches Kunstin-

stitut in Frankfurt, but many are the objections that have been raised against it. Milanesi rejected it as the missing masterpiece in 1880 in favour of the Longford portrait discussed above; Burckhardt disputed

63

its authenticity as a Sebastiano in 1898; and Weizsaecker!! ‘after thorough investigation’ repudiated the associated names of both painter and sitter and, inclining towards ‘an artist of the Emilean school’,

finally

endorsed

Venturi’s

attribution

to Parmigianino,

‘whose name’ as he said in his Catalogue of the Kunstinstitut collection published in 1900, ‘in all respects so aptly springs to mind’. Twenty-four years later Parmigianino’s name sprang, it seems, less aptly to mind and was likewise discarded when, to his own satisfac-

tion and that of the Gallery, Herman Voss!? found himself able to identify the painter as Girolamo da Carpi and the sitter as Renée de France, Duchess of Ferrara.

In 1540, or thereabouts, Girolamo da Carpi had been appointed court painter to the Duke, Ercole IL, for whom he painted a number of family portraits, though not, apparently, that of the Duchess—or so it had been supposed until the publication of Voss’s thesis—as no trace of such a work nor any mention of it in the Este inventories could be found. But negative evidence is seldom conclusive and in Voss’s view the omission seemed an unlikely one. Voss, assuming the picture to have been painted soon after Girolamo’s appointment, proceeded to develop his argument at some length. He maintained that the sitter, manifestly a patrician, is of a northern type and of the right age; that she bears a recognizable resemblance to Renée as she appears in a woodcut after a medal published in Lyons thirteen years later; that the dress, albeit Italian in style (as one might have expected) is lavish and in conformity with Renée’s reputed taste, but that the jewellery is French and the pendant of Limoges enamel. The lady would therefore appear to be French, and in Voss’s view such is the coincidence of time, place and social setting as almost to exclude the possibility of any other identification,

save

only that Renée

was

said to be, if not ugly,

certainly plain, which the lady portrayed palpably is not. Nothing

139

Chapter V daunted, Voss countered this objection, which many would regard as insuperable, with the amiable suggestion that she may not have been as plain as she was made out to be. A triumph for Girolamo da Carpi, who emerges as a far more considerable painter than had previously been supposed, the work, which Voss acknowledged as one of the great achievements of cinqucento painting in North Italy, must also be accounted a triumph for Renée de France, to whom in the past history would appear to have done less justice than she deserved. But is it Renée? According to her bridegroom, Ercole d’Este, who succeeded his father, Alfonzo I in 1534, Renée, daughter of Louis XII King of France, whom he married in 1528, was not beautiful, but had

compensating qualities.!3 She was delicate in appearance having a pale complexion, blue eyes and long flaxen hair, a feature that is sufficiently emphasized not to be discounted, as is often the case, since in Italy gentlemen, not excluding Dante and Petrarch, seem

always to have preferred blondes. Owing to the troubles by which the later years of her marriage were beset, no less than to the migraine from which she constantly suffered, she aged prematurely and at the age of sixty was said to look nearer a hundred. In 1539, because of certain intrigues connected

with her French

entourage,

the Duke

found occasion to banish her to the Castle of Consandolo, where she remained, except for one brief interlude, for some five or six years,

while in 1551, because of her Calvinistic embroilments, she became

68 69 70

140

virtually a prisoner in her own palace. Eventually, there was a partial reconciliation, but not until Girolamo da Carpi had left the ducal service, after a period, which, because it coincided with the years of Renée’s estrangement from her husband, might well explain the omission of her portrait from the Este series. But supposing that Girolamo da Carpi did paint her in 1540, as Voss contended, could the Frankfurt portrait be that of a woman thirty years of age, estranged and unhappy, subject to migraine and the mother of six children? All the probabilities are against it, quite apart from the relevant consideration as to whether the sitter in the alleged portrait bears any resemblance to Renée as she has been described and as she appears in the five alleged portraits that still exist. In none of these is she represented in her prime, but in all of them, in the early anonymous drawing at Chantilly, as in the late rough sketch in the Rodi MS. (in both of which the heavily lidded eyes may be noted) she is shown wearing the northern type of hood, the precursor of the French aétifet, which covered the ears. Out of compliment to her husband she adopted Italian dress on her arrival in

Concerning a ‘lost’ Portrait of a Lady Ferrara, but two years later, under the disruptive influence of her principal lady-in-waiting, Mme. Soubise, she reverted to the French mode, as being plus décente et plus sainte. It is therefore extremely unlikely that she would have sat for her portrait in a costume as unmistakably Italian as that worn in the portrait under discussion, a costume which is clearly earlier in style and on the authority of Rossita Levi Pisetzky!* is datable to the beginning of the 1530s and not to a decade later. In a letter addressed to Isabella d’Este, her informant at the Ferrarese court, Battista Stabellino,!® gives a careful

account of some of the dresses worn on the occasion of a state ball held on 11th September 1530, when Renée was described as wearing a small black velvet bonnet over a gold snood and an elegant gown with a high-standing collar and il busto quasi come alla francese. The daughters of the Queen of Naples,* on the other hand, were dressed in the Italian fashion,; with a low corsage and il balzo, that is to say,

in the style illustrated in a small version in the Frankfurt portrait, in which the balzo, unlike the exaggerated headdresses favoured by Isabella, was perfectly proportioned to the head of the wearer. It is not, however, with the dress so much as with the accessories worn by this bellissima donna pensosa that Levi Pisetsky was preoccupied, largely because, by reason of their unusual splendour, they belong to the category of those ornaments that were banned in Italy by the sumptuary laws then prevailing. The finely-wrought handle of the ostrich-feather fan in particular is of the type that was nearly always prohibited and the same

is true of the elaborate earrings, which,

though not so far exactly paralleled, would appear to be of Neapolitan workmanship. For not only did the Neapolitan goldsmiths specialize in earrings, they were also free to embellish their designs at will, simply because the Kingdom of Naples was at this time under the domination of Spain and therefore exempt from the sumptuary laws that obtained elsewhere in Italy. Although it does not follow that a sitter wearing Spanish or Neapolitan jewellery is necessarily either Spanish or Neapolitan, the fact that she does so must be taken into account when the question of her identity is involved. Seeing, then, that the bellissima donna here portrayed cannot by any stretch of the imagination be Renée de France—and if not a portrait of Renée de France then not a work by * Isabella (del Balzo) d’Aragona, widow of Ferrante, the last king of Naples, who was deposed in 1502. He went to France, but she and her daughters took refuge at the Ferrarese Court. +... vestite alla usanza nostra, con u balzo e scoffiotto, con i suot busti tagliati bassi.

141

Chapter V

Girolamo da Carpi either (with a consequent diminution of his oeuvre )—some other sitter of comparable distinction must be sought, if any definitive conclusions regarding this major work of art are to be reached. *

*

*

*

*

With the repudiation of Voss’s theory, one is tempted to wonder whether the original attribution of the Frankfurt portrait to Sebastiano del Piombo may not, after all, have been correct and whether Amante may not have been justified in his belief that what we have here is none other than the ‘lost’ portrait of Giulia Gonzaga. However, as we have already seen, the attribution of the work to Sebastiano is one that Burckhardt!® would by no means allow; but it is easier to dismiss Sebastiano than to propose a convincing alternative, particularly when ‘the introduction of a major name is desirable’, which must be the case, in view of his estimation of its outstanding

importance as a work was to hazard a guess because the landscape the Ferrarese painter, Venetian.

Howbeit,

of art. Yet in the end the best that he could do that the painter might be Dosso Dossi, mainly seen through the window recalled the work of just as if it were not equally reminiscent of the

when

all is said and

done,

it seems

that his

exclusion of Sebastiano was based not on an objective assessment of the stylistic evidence, but upon a subjective appraisal of the physical allurements of the sitter, whom he found not beautiful enough to have

warranted either the dispatch of Sebastiano to Fondi to take her portrait or the attempt of Barbarossa to carry her off as a prize for the Sultan, a personal reaction amounting to little more than, ‘not my

type’.

While it is true that up to a point all subjective criteria must be suspect and that degrees of beauty can never be unequivocally determined, it may nevertheless be permitted to claim, in opposition to Burckhardt, that she is not only lovely, but in all respects enchanting. In the original the complexion is not pallid as it appears to be in reproduction, but is warm and glowing, while the unselfconscious tranquility of the gaze and the haunting subtlety of the expression, especially round the mouth, have a charm and a fascination that can neither be conveyed in words nor sensed in an illustration. With the high forehead of the intellectual, she has all the

appearance of someone who might well have been described as Giulia Gonzaga, as being exceptionally endowed both in mind and body. Profoundly concerned though she was with the things of the soul and

142

Concerning a ‘lost’ Portrait of a Lady anxious above all to resolve the religious doubts by which she found herself disquieted and perplexed, Giulia Gonzaga, who was famed alike for her courtesy and her wit, yet retained a very sober and natural regard for the things of the flesh. On one occasion, when

asked by Valdés whether she would have more confidence in a large sum of money in the bank or in Christ’s promise implicit in the injunction, “Take no thought for the morrow’, she replied at once and without prevarication, ‘in the money in the bank’. She could also be extremely trenchant on occasion. When referring to certain alchemists she spoke of them as furfanti mendichi e pidocchiosi—lying and lousy rascals, sentiments which one can less easily associate with the more sedate types portrayed in the so-called Giulia Gonzaga series. Similarly, when he visited her in 1535 Caro had been much amused by her vigorous use of some of Molza’s more pungent expressions. For those who profess themselves unable to see likenesses it is useless to invoke other Gonzaga portraits in support of the proposed identification. But for those to whom the conformation of a head means something it 1s easy to see that as between the features of Giulia Gonzaga, seen in profile in a marble* of unknown provenance, and those of the sitter in the portrait, seen full face, the proportions are the same. The same cast of countenance, the lofty brow, the aristocratic nose and the fine eyes are seen again in an engraving of Giulia’s brother Luigi Gonzaga, called Rodomonte. Admittedly, the

64 63 66

engraving, based on a low relief in the Gonzaga palace at Sabbioneta,

is thrice removed from truth, but if the head be compared with that of his son, Vespasiano, as seen in Leone Leoni’s memorial bronze figure in the church at Sabbioneta, it may reasonably be claimed that the type of the Gonzaga physiognomy characteristic of this branch of the family has been as nearly established as makes no matter, having regard to the slender resources available. While even by the most sceptical it must surely be conceded that there is a stronger resemblance between these three heads than between any one of them and the so-called likeness of Giulia Gonzaga repudiated above. We come, finally, to a consideration of the landscape seen through the window, the only other element in the composition that might

conceivably provide a clue to the identity of the sitter. Giulia’s biographer, Bruto Amante, who was closely associated with the Fondi region and may therefore be thought to speak with authority, maintained beyond a peradventure that the landscape * The whereabouts of the marble is not known, buta unique photograph belongs to Professor Angelo De Santis, who of his great kindness and courtesy was good enough to lend it to me.

61

Chapter V

depicted in the portrait represents that part of the Colonna demesne which lay between Terracina and Fondi on the Appian Way. He described it in these words. ‘The village, allowing for some modifica-

tion in the course of time, corresponds to an estate belonging to Giulia some four or five kilometres from Fondi on the road between Fondi and Rome which Sebastiano would have seen and could have sketched before he reached Fondi. It is called Monticelli’ or, more precisely, Monticelli di Fondi, as it was called before 1863, when, in order to avoid

confusion

with another

Monticelli,

the name

was

changed to Monte San Biagio.!® In confirmation of Amante’s remarks, if confirmation be needed,

62

the view recently expressed by Dr. Aylwin Cotton, the well-known archaeologist, and by Dr. Benedetto Soccodato,* Sindaco di Fondi, neither of whom knew anything of the portrait or of the circumstances of its painting may be of interest. Thus, having spoken of the cliff-like heights, which are typical of the terrain, of the Lago di Fondi, which is here incorrectly situated in relation to them and of the mountains behind Fondi, which lies in the plain, Dr. Cotton summed up her impressions by saying that what the artist appears to have represented ‘is a sort of distilled essence of the landscape of the whole of the Fondi area’, which has undergone a process of ‘stylization and idealization’ for the purposes of the composition. Similarly, while emphasizing the fact that ‘the summits certainly seem stylized, while the situation of the village of Monte San Biagio is somewhat falsified’, Dr. Soccodato makes no doubt that the landscape is related to the environs of Fondi looking towards the north from the south west. On geological grounds also there is a strong presumption that the country represented cannot be other than it is said to be. For unless the strange rock formations seen to the left of the composition are thought to be figments of the painter’s imagination—which is not to be supposed—they must correspond to some natural phenomenon and if so to what, if not to the metamorphic limestone ‘stacks’, crowned with low scrub, which occur in this part of Italy and of which no more striking example could be found than Pisco Montano in which the Lepine ranges terminate dramatically at Terracina—the very gateway to the Colonna estates. Further inland there is a similar formation and it may well be that these are the two columnar rocks * Tam extremely grateful to both Dr. Cotton and Dott. Soccodato for their comments, for their kind and careful consideration of the problem and for all the trouble they

took.

‘

t Le cume appaiono decisamente stilezzate, mentre l’abitato di Monte San Biagio é riprodotto secondo una prospettiva alquanto falsata.

Concerning & a ‘lost’ Portrait of

a Lad Ly

indicated, albeit schematically, in the composite view seen through the window. For that it is a composite view, embracing the dolomitic peaks, the hill town, the lake and the contours of the Ausonian mountains to the north west of Fondi cannot be doubted by anyone acquainted with the Fondi region. It is true that the numerous ruins depicted in the foreground no longer exist, but as recorded by Abertelli in the sixteenth century and by Pratelli!? in the eighteenth they still constituted one of the most remarked features of that part of the Appian Way until comparatively recent times. It may be noted, in addition, that the type of the church tower in the middle distance resembles that of the two principal churches in Fondi, S. Pietro, in which a partially burnt crucifix still survives as a relic of Barbarossa’s raid in 1535, and S. Maria, in front

of which there used to stand an obelisk* of approximately the same form as the one visible to the right of the landscape in the picture. Owing to the topographical inaccuracies, discussed above, which are not in dispute, Dr. Soccodato came to the conclusion that ‘the picture had been painted at a distance from the scene itself and was based on notes taken in a hurry’. This perceptive observation could hardly be more apposite, were Sebastiano indeed the painter, as Amante

believed, since, having been sent post haste to Fondi, he

would have had no time to linger in the landscape or to record it in detail. Nor, in all probability, would it have been to his purpose, in

any case, to do more than to recreate the scene in general terms and in such a way as to make it recognizable to anyone familiar with the Fondi road, or in Dr. Cotton’s words ‘to distil its essence’. If this was his aim he certainly seems to have achieved it: no one, at any rate, has

yet had the temerity to pretend that it might be Ferrara. The arguments in favour of identifying the lady in the Frankfurt portrait with Giulia Gonzaga may now be briefly summarized. She is young and of the right age; she is beautiful, distinguished and of a recognizably Gonzaga type; she wears a dress of the right period, namely, 1530-35 and jewellery and other accessories apparently of Neapolitan origin and generally prohibited by the sumptuary laws enacted in Italy, but from which the Spanish dominated Kingdom of Naples and Sicily was exempt. She is portrayed, furthermore, against * The obelisk is shown in old prints of Fondi, but was removed some years ago to make way for the traffic. I owe this information to my old friend, Vincenzio Jannucci. + L’autore del quadro lavoro lontano del modello vero e reale, in base ad appunti raccolti in fretta. Because he had to ride during the heat of the day, as he afterwards told Michelangelo, Sebastiano suffered greatly on the journey. (Milanesi: op. cit. p. 100.)

145

Chapter V depicted in the portrait represents that part of the Colonna demesne which lay between Terracina and Fondi on the Appian Way. He described it in these words. “The village, allowing for some modification in the course of time, corresponds to an estate belonging to Giulia some four or five kilometres from Fondi on the road between Fondi and Rome which Sebastiano would have seen and could have sketched before he reached Fondi. It is called Monticelli’ or, more precisely, Monticelli di Fondi, as it was called before 1863, when, in order to avoid confusion with another Monticelli, the name was

changed to Monte San Biagio.!® In confirmation of Amante’s remarks, if confirmation be needed,

the view recently expressed by Dr. Aylwin Cotton, the well-known archaeologist, and by Dr. Benedetto Soccodato,* Sindaco di Fondi,

62

neither of whom knew anything of the portrait or of the circumstances of its painting may be of interest. Thus, having spoken of the cliff-like heights, which are typical of the terrain, of the Lago di Fondi, which is here incorrectly situated in relation to them and of the mountains behind Fondi, which hes in the plain, Dr. Cotton summed up her impressions by saying that what the artist appears to have represented ‘is a sort of distilled essence of the landscape of the whole of the Fondi area’, which has undergone a process of ‘stylization and idealization’ for the purposes of the composition. Similarly, while emphasizing the fact that ‘the summits certainly seem stylized, while the situation of the village of Monte San Biagio is somewhat falsified’,;Dr. Soccodato makes no doubt that the landscape is related to the environs of Fondi looking towards the north from the south west. On geological grounds also there is a strong presumption that the country represented cannot be other than it is said to be. For unless the strange rock formations seen to the left of the composition are thought to be figments of the painter’s imagination—which is not to be supposed—they must correspond to some natural phenomenon and if so to what, if not to the metamorphic limestone ‘stacks’, crowned with low scrub, which occur in this part of Italy and of which no more striking example could be found than Pisco Montano in which the Lepine ranges terminate dramatically at Terracina—the very gateway to the Colonna estates. Further inland there is a similar formation and it may well be that these are the two columnar rocks * [am extremely grateful to both Dr. Cotton and Dott. Soccodato for their comments,

for their kind and careful consideration of the problem and for all the trouble they ; took.

+ Le cime appatono decisamente stilezzate, mentre l’abitato di Monte San Biagio é riprodotto secondo una prospettiva alquanto falsata.

fi4 +4

Concerning a ‘lost’ Portrait of a Lady indicated, albeit schematically, in the composite view seen through the window. For that it is a composite view, embracing the dolomitic peaks, the hill town, the lake and the contours of the Ausonian mountains to the north west of Fondi cannot be doubted by anyone acquainted with the Fondi region. It is true that the numerous ruins depicted in the foreground no longer exist, but as recorded by Abertelli in the sixteenth century and

by Pratelli!? in the eighteenth they still constituted one of the most remarked features of that part of the Appian Way until comparatively recent times. It may be noted, in addition, that the type of the church tower in the middle distance resembles that of the two principal churches in Fondi, S. Pietro, in which a partially burnt crucifix still survives as a relic of Barbarossa’s raid in 1535, and S. Maria, in front

of which there used to stand an obelisk* of approximately the same form as the one visible to the right of the landscape in the picture. Owing to the topographical inaccuracies, discussed above, which are not in dispute, Dr. Soccodato came to the conclusion that ‘the picture had been painted at a distance from the scene itself and was based on notes taken in a hurry’.}; This perceptive observation could hardly be more apposite, were Sebastiano indeed the painter, as Amante believed, since, having been sent post haste to Fondi, he would have had no time to linger in the landscape or to record it in detail. Nor, in all probability, would it have been to his purpose, in any case, to do more than to recreate the scene in general terms and in such a way as to make it recognizable to anyone familiar with the Fondi road, or in Dr. Cotton’s words ‘to distil its essence’. If this was

his aim he certainly seems to have achieved it: no one, at any rate, has yet had the temerity to pretend that it might be Ferrara. The arguments in favour of identifying the lady in the Frankfurt portrait with Giulia Gonzaga may now be briefly summarized. She is young and of the right age; she is beautiful, distinguished and of a recognizably Gonzaga type; she wears a dress of the right period, namely, 1530-35 and jewellery and other accessories apparently of Neapolitan origin and generally prohibited by the sumptuary laws enacted in Italy, but from which the Spanish dominated Kingdom of Naples and Sicily was exempt. She is portrayed, furthermore, against * The obelisk is shown in old prints of Fondi, but was removed some

make way for the traffic.

years ago to

I owe this information to my old friend, Vincenzio

Iannucci.

+ L’autore del quadro lavoro lontano del modello vero e reale, in base ad appunti raccolti in fretta. Because he had to ride during the heat of the day, as he afterwards told Michelangelo, Sebastiano suffered greatly on the journey. (Milanesi: op. cit. p. 100.)

145

Chapter V

a landscape confirmed by those qualified to give an opinion, as being a stylized rendering of that stretch of the Terracina—Fondi road which, in the early part of the sixteenth century, formed part of the Colonna inheritance. The internal evidence in support of the identification provided by the picture itself would thus appear to be conclusive; so much so that it would devolve upon anyone of a contrary opinion to disprove it by naming an alternative sitter of comparable rank, living in the same region and at approximately the same time and being of the appropriate age. *

*

*

*

*

Although everything so far discussed conspires to substantiate Amante’s hypothesis as to the identity of the sitter, it by no means follows that there can be equally little doubt among certain of the conoscenti as to the identity of the painter; on the contrary, few pictures can have been the subject of such doubtful disputation. It is one thing, however, as we have already observed, to dismiss a painter whose name has been traditionally associated with a picture, and quite another to propose a plausible alternative. For some critics the attribution of the work to Sebastiano del Piombo is the least acceptable of all while for others it is difficult to see how its ascription to Scorel, Sodoma, Dosso Dossi, Parmigianino, Paris Bordone, Niccolo dell’Abate, Girolomo da Carpi or Giulio Romano could ever have been preferred. Yet if it is not by any startling measure of agreement that the style experts have been distinguished, they have, at least, been unanimous in their recognition of the superlative quality of the picture itself. Never is it mentioned in any context that this noto e bellissimo ritratto is not described in the most eulogistic terms and proclaimed as a masterpiece of the first rank. But as to whether it is to be classified as a work of the Netherland, the Lombard, the Ferrarese, the Parmesan, the Venetian, the Modenese or the Mantuan school

they have never as yet been able to decide. In many ways the task of assigning a picture to one hand rather than to another is easier today than it was in the past, owing partly to the extensive researches in a number of fields that have since been undertaken, partly to the greater technical resources at the disposal of the expert and partly to the enlarged indexes and other facilities that are now available. All the same one cannot but endorse Morelli’s view that “it is incomprehensible. .. how Dr. Bode?® could have thought of attributing the Frankfurt portrait to a Dutch painter [Jan van Scorel]

146

Concerning a ‘lost’ Portrait of a Lady of the first half of the sixteenth century’. Incomprehensible, indeed, for it would be almost impossible to imagine a portrait less typically Dutch or more typically Italian in every detail. But as a mentor was Morelli himself any more dependable? ‘The most admirable of all Sodoma’s portraits from life’, he wrote, ‘is that of a refined young woman in the Stadel Institute in Frankfurt . . . one of the gems of the collection’.?! That Sodoma ‘loved to represent real people’ and that his Monte Oliveto frescoes ‘teem with portraits’ is not in doubt, but as to portraits proper in the conventional sense, the aforesaid portrait might well be the most admirable as there are no others, a fact that his

biographer, R. H. H. Cust,?? who none the less accepted the attribution, felt constrained to point out. According to his thesis the picture, which he described as ‘a superb work . . . painted with extraordinary care and finish’ such as Sodoma never equalled again either before or after, portrays a lady of the Spannocchi family and is datable to Sodoma’s first Sienese period, which coincided with the very beginning of the sixteenth century, to which period, on the costume evidence alone, as we now know, it could not possibly belong. It seems, however, that Morelli may, after all have been more interested

in finding a portrait for the painter than a painter for the portrait, since, as he himself confessed with more candour than caution, his

real object had been ‘to reinstate this gifted Lombard painter . . . as he had been both maligned and misunderstood’. In the circumstances Berenson’s?? advocacy of the same hand (if mere listing can be called advocacy) can do nothing to increase and much to diminish confidence in his judgment. Burckhardt’s preoccupations, as we have already seen, were of a different kind. His main concern was to dispute the identity of the sitter and by so doing to deny the portrait to Sebastiano and only incidentally to cast about for an alternative painter. Concentrating on the background landscape, a genre in which Dosso Dossi specialized,

he declared himself in favour of the Ferrarese painter. But as Burckhardt failed to take into account all the more important respects in which the portrait differs fundamentally from anything ever attributed to Dossi, its quality apart, it is not altogether surprising that his speculations have since been passed over in silence. Weizaecker’s more considered attribution of the work to Parmigianino, though since rejected, is deserving of more serious attention. Parmigianino was at least a portraitist on a considerable scale, even though there is nothing in his oewvre remotely akin either in style or composition to the Frankfurt masterpiece. Nor is it easy to see how a painter, whose

elegant, elongated, effeminate

forms proclaim the

147

Chapter V Mannerist par excellence, could ever have been associated with a

portrait which, though supremely elegant in its own way, is at once more robust in character and more profound in feeling. Those who have specialized in the study of Parmigianino have, in any case, disclaimed it, either specifically or by implication. In Frohlich-Bum’s monograph, published in 1921, the attribution is not so much as mentioned, while in Freedberg’s** more recent study it is summarily dismissed as being ‘quite unrelated’ to Parmigianino’s style. In his review of Weizaecker’s Catalogue of the pictures in the Stadel Kunstinstitut, Venturi2> looked somewhat askance at the newly proposed ascription to Parmigianino of a work, as he then wrote, attributed ora a Paris Bordone ora a Sebastiano. Unfortunate-

ly, he did not say by whom the name of Bordone was first introduced into the controversy, nor what arguments were advanced in support of so improbable a claimant. For without some guidance in the matter it is impossible to conjecture what the coarse brushwork, the stiff frontal pose and the commonplace appearance of Bordone’s stolid types can have been supposed to have in common with the subtle grace of the Stadel portrait. But that Bordone and Parmigianino should ever have been considered as possible alternatives for the attribution of a picture that could, in point of fact, be by neither of them, constitutes in itself a sufficient comment on the reliability of unsupported style criticism as such. Although at one time Venturi himself evidently inclined towards a Venetian painter, he afterwards declared himself in favour of a comparatively little known but accomplished artist of the Modenese school, Niccolé dell’Abate.° At first sight this might appear to be the most plausible of the ascriptions so far considered, but no reliance can

be placed upon it. Niccolo worked mainly in fresco and few of his portraits are well authenticated, so that it amounts to relatively little to say that the picture in the Stadel Kunstinstitut is easily recognizable as being by Niccolo in respect of the landscape and other particolari. Here, once again emphasis is placed on the landscape, a minor feature in the composition, while the other (and, one may add,

more important) particolari which render the portrait ben riconosctbile di Niccol6

are

not elaborated.

We

are not, therefore,

much

enlightened, more especially not, as it is in the treatment of the landscape that some have discerned the authentic hand of Scorel, while others have exclaimed with equal enthusiasm, ‘oh, how like Dosso Dossi!’ Yet whereas in the text Venturi partly glosses over the highly controversial nature of the problem, in the Catalogo delle Opere of the artist he omits all mention of the disputed work, though whether intentionally, by accident or by reason of a sudden onset of

148

Concerning a ‘lost’ Portrait of a Lady conscience who can say? Perhaps its non-inclusion amounted to a virtual acknowledgement of the fact that without corroborative evidence of a more specific and less subjective kind no judgment based on purely stylistic criteria could now be regarded as definitive, no matter who the preferred painter might be. Therefore, when at a considerably later date Voss announced the sitter to be Renée de France Duchess of Ferrara, and the painter, in consequence, Girolamo da Carpi, court painter to the Duke, it may well have seemed that we had at last found ‘a happy issue out of all our afflictions’. But the issue, as it turns out, has proved after all to be

less happy than might at first have been supposed, since the sitter, as we have now seen, cannot be Renée de France nor the painter, by the

same token, Girolamo da Carpi, who would never have been thought of had he not been working at the Ferrarese court during a period that Voss believed to be coincidental with the assumed date of the picture. Even F. Antal,?’ intent though he was upon building up an oewvre for Girolamo could not at first refrain from expressing surprise at “this rather unexpected attribution of the famous picture’, though naturally this did not afterwards prevent him from accepting it as an authentic work, without so much as a perfunctory recital of the critic’s gradual—it could be, it might be, it must be, it is. So that we

need not be astonished when later on in the same article we find two references to ‘Girolamo’s portrait’ of the Duchess, just as if for all the world, there could no longer be any doubt about it. As to the ascription of the painting to Niccolo dell’Abate (incidentally, the most acceptable of the conjectures), which he dismisses in passing, for was it not in the style of his portraits that Niccolo differed most of all from his compatriot Girolamo da Carpi? And so on... .* *

*

*

*

*

Now that seven of the nine painters to whom the celebrated portrait has been assigned have been weighed in the balance and found wanting, might it not be as well to re-examine the rejected claims of

Sebastiano del Piombo, to whom it was originally attributed when it arrived in this country at the turn of the eighteenth century? Should these prove to be paramount, it would do much to explain the extraordinary divergences of opinion we have so far encountered, * A tentative ascription to Bronzino was made by Crowe & Cavalcaselle (A History of Painting in North Italy, ed. Tancred Borenius, London 1912, Ill, p. 246) but the argument was not pursued.

149

Chapter V since, once the correct attribution has been discarded, the choice at

the disposal of the expert naturally becomes wider and the margin of error almost indefinitely extended. Inasmuch as the superlative quality of the Frankfurt picture is not in question, we may reasonably assume it to be by the hand of a master of distinction and a portraitist par excellence. In neither of these respects, particularly not in the latter, can the painters discussed above be said to qualify, whereas Sebastiano was not only an artist, who ‘after the death of Raphael was acknowledged to hold the first place in painting’, but was famous above all for ‘the excellence of his living likenesses’. For some reason or other in recent times he has come to be less highly esteemed, not because his merits are in reality less than they were reputed to be, but because, being a comparatively rare master and his works widely dispersed, his oeuvre, which for these reasons does not lend itself to an easy assessment, has to some extent been passed over. The relative inaccessibility of much of it has led, furthermore, to certain preconceptions concerning its development. Why, otherwise, should The Raising of Lazarus, when newly-cleaned, have prompted the remark that ‘the contrast between the ‘Roman’ semi-circle ... in the foreground and middle ground and the ‘Venetian’ landscape throw a new light on early Mannerism that could not have been guessed at’? But why could the fusion of Venetian and Roman elements in his work not have been guessed at, seeing that it had long been recognized by those who have specialized in studies of the painter? ‘In the formal organization of this work’,

wrote Rodolfo Pallucchini?®, when discussing the painting some thirty years ago, ‘the Venetian principles remain basic and unmistakable, just as the new elements of Roman culture are equally apparent’. In view of all this and of the debatable nature of the issue to be decided, nothing save a dispassionate analysis of Sebastiano’s manner in all its aspects will suffice to determine whether, on stylistic grounds, the Frankfurt portrait can or cannot be said to be his. Though in many ways a typical painter of the Renaissance, Sebastiano was, nevertheless, unique. Not being possessed of a natural facility, yet being at the same time a profoundly serious painter, he always took great pains and practised his art with a diligence that precluded the possibility of a facile approach. In consequence, his pictures were never hastily or carelessly contrived, but were, at their best, the outcome of a passionate and intense act of contemplation, an act that endowed them with that peculiar quality of meaning, without which there can be no true greatness in art. By reason of the intellectuality of his approach, an intellectuality with which his powers of observation, empathy and understanding

150

Concerning a ‘lost’ Portrait of a Lady were commensurate, he was eminently qualified to fulfil the creative requirements of portraiture in its finest capacity. He was not an artist for whom a merely superficial resemblance would suffice; he sought, on the contrary, to penetrate to the soul of his subject in such a way as to become one with it in the fullness of an intuitive comprehension. Thus with few exceptions, his sitters impose themselves upon the beholder as commanding personalities centred in an inner life of their own. ‘Marvellously absorbed in themselves’ they look out upon the world from within, as if each in turn were to say Cogito ergo sum. As one might expect, a content so predominantly intellectual naturally found expression in forms possessed of a certain magnitude, which, because of this vital sense of in-being, are characterized by a grandeur that has not inappropriately been described as sculptural. Thou who with marvellous skill renderest the brush The equal of the hammer: and givest to colour The grandeur sculpture once alone possessed,*

wrote the poet, Molza, addressing Sebastiano and speaking in praise

of the Giulia Gonzaga portrait—a tribute indeed, 1f Michelangelo? was justified when he said that he had always thought that sculpture was a lantern to painting and that the difference between them was as that between the sun and the moon. Sebastiano thus emerges as a master on a grand scale, whose sense of form is enhanced by a use of colour that may analogously be termed

classical in its restraint,

a combination

that is admirably

epitomized in a phrase of Venturi’s—la fustone perfetta tra valore plastico e valore cromatico. In the more sombre of his male portraits Sebastiano generally remained content with the aristocratic sobriety of contrasting greys and blacks, but in his more decorative female portraits he inclined towards a richer palette and to the achievement of wonderfully harmonized effects. Variations on selected colour themes are also not unusual, as in the pinks and golds heightening to reds and yellows in the Radnor Portrait of a Lady and in la gamma di verdi appassiti in the Lady as S. Agatha. In both cases Sebastiano’s taste for elaborate details and decorative effects is evident, but in neither case (nor for that matter in other of his compositions) is his palpable pleasure in the rendering of sumptuous fabrics and diverse textures, of ornate * Tu che lo stile con mirabil cura Pareggi col martello: e la grandezza Che solo possedea gia la scultura, Aicolor dont... et non minor vaghezza.

;

54

,

(Rime del Brocardo et Altri Autort (Venice, 1538) As quoted by Amanti (op. cit. p- 139) doni is given as dona, presumably a misprint.

reoyl

Chapter V headdresses and fine veilings, all executed with una cura meticolosa,© ever allowed to obtrude. Like the majority of his contemporaries, Sebastiano favoured the half or three-quarter length figure, sometimes posed singly and sometimes in groups of two, three or four figures, with such accessories as books, writing materials or whatever else happened to be appropriate to the individual sitter, to which, like Titian’s ubiquitous clock, various studio props in the shape of the knotted green curtain and turkey carpet with its distinctive border were often added. Not altogether surprisingly, it is frequently as much by the persistence of particular faults or weaknesses as by the overall style of a work that the hand of an artist is proclaimed. In Sebastiano’s case the narrow limits within which he confines his sitters, the uniform

4

level of the heads as between the standing and seated figure, some uncertainty in relating one object to another and occasionally something of the same irregularity in the proportions of his models that we find in Michelangelo’s, may be particularly remarked. As if to compensate instinctively for this tendency to confine his sitters too closely, he often made use of the popular Venetian device of introducing a vista seen through an open window to the right or left of the sitter. These landscapes, akin to those of Titian, may be more or less idealized in any given instance and in Sebastiano’s compositions are marked by a preference for bridge-spanned waters, ruins of a more or less stock pattern and dramatically-lit skies enhanced with majestic banks of cumulus cloud, features, which in the great Raising of Lazarus, are exemplified on an almost heroic scale. Although there are some exceptions to the rule, Sebastiano’s flesh

37

tones are for the most part warm and glowing and there is less differentiation between the complexions of men and women than is ordinarily found at this period; bronzo dorato, the words used by Venturi to denote that of the men, being only a shade darker than that of the women, as witness the hue ‘of the Madonna in the Holy Family, which in turn may be contrasted with the paler colouring of the Child. Generally speaking, and apart from the differences in the type of physiognomy, for which allowances must be made, Sebastiano’s portraits may be said to be distinguished by the firmness and subtletly of the modelling, the sparse lighting of the eyes and the expressiveness of the lips. Though nearly always stylized and not always a pair, the hands and wrists of his figures are easily recognizable as belonging, in a manner of speaking , rather to Sebastiano than to his sitters, in1the sense that they are dbolicatel in accordance

with certain formulae,

instead of being individual to his sitters. They are, for the most part, at once both graceful and strong and are, at their best, expressive of

152

Concerning & a ‘lost’ Portrait of

a Lad Ly

an unmistakable nobility. The fingers tend, as a rule, to be long in

proportion to the palm and the index finger to be separated from the

middle fingers, which are generally held close together, both in the

attenuated type proper to some of the female sitters and in the more spatulate type common to both sexes. In addition to these particular characteristics which render Sebastiano an exceptionally individual painter, it is, above all, in his olive shadows, those ‘leaden tints’, with which he is always and invariably associated, that Sebastiano’s sign manual ultimately resides. *

*

*

*

*

In his own lifetime Sebastiano del Piombo was acknowledged to be un pittore eccellentissimo, or in Pietro Aretino’s words, un pittore muracoloso, while shortly after his death his pre-eminence as a portraitist was undisputed. Rarissimo was the term used by Borghini*! in praise of his achievements in this capacity, while of his numerous female portraits ‘executed with consummate elegance’ that of Giulia Gonzaga was recognized to be the most beautiful and the most famous. What, then, of the Frankfurt portrait, considered not with reference

to the identity of the sitter, but to that of the painter? Could it or could it not be by Sebastiano? As far as the composition is concerned it may be seen at once to be typical in three respects. In the first place, although ample justice is done to the sitter, the work as a whole has a slightly restricted appearance and the chair, which is incompletely conceived, bears no real relationship to the table. Secondly, the window opens onto a landscape composed of precisely those elements, already detailed, with which we are familiar in other pictures by Sebastiano. Thirdly, the knotted green curtain and the distinctive carpet covering the table are studio props with which, from a number of other examples, we are well acquainted. Notwithstanding Sebastiano’s acknowledged pleasure in decorative detail, the Stadel portrait is admittedly more sumptuous than any surviving work known to be by his hand, but the greater care lavished upon it would be consistent with the nature of the commission and in keeping with the reputation of the sitter. Nor must it be forgotten that in Rome it was instantly recognized and acclaimed as a masterpiece, surpassing anything he had accomplished before. And that “he always took great pains with his works’ (once he could be pursuaded to work at all) may here be thought to be borne out in a superlative example.

joo

Chapter V For it would indeed be difficult to do justice in words to the exquisite handling of every detail of the elegant attire—the gold-striped green taffeta dress, the transparent gold-threaded tucker, the falling cuffs, edged with matching needle-point lace, the gold net head-dress trimmed with seed pearls and alternating cabochon rubies and emeralds. Yet even when to this the ‘prohibited’ accessories are added, the finely-wrought jewellery, notably the elaborate earrings, the gold-mounted feather fan and perfumed gloves, the parts remain throughout subordinate to the whole and her apparel to the sitter. One argument that has been advanced against the ascription to Sebastiano is the ‘nervous handling’ of the dress, but as the material

71

76

happens to be taffeta, which must be so handled and obviously cannot be rendered with the breadth appropriate to velvet, satin or brocade, the type of fabric favoured by the majority of his sitters, the objection may be dismissed as being more apparent than real. In any case, the handling of the sleeve of Sebastiano’s Salome affords an interesting parallel and may be said to be almost equally ‘nervous’, though here the material is not taffeta, but silk. Finally, we come to an analysis of the portrait itself and to a consideration of various comparative aspects. The pose, with its potential turn towards the left, recalls the spiral movement implicit in the great portrait of Clement VII and the hands, with their long slender fingers, those of the Dorothea,

examples. (2 (6)

Sebastiano,

Likewise, 1f compared of which

to quote but one of several

with other female portraits by

the Lady as S. Agatha,

the Longford

Castle

portrait and the so-called Fornarina may be cited, the work will be seen to exhibit a number of striking and significant similarities. Common to them all is the slightly schematic treatment of the contours of the face and the neck, the sculpturally defined supraorbital ridges, the uniformly dark eyes, in which the unlit or sparsely lit iris contrasts sharply with the pellucid white of the eye, the deep glowing flesh tones and the olive shadows. And just as the coiffure of the lady in the guise of a saint closely resembles that of the courtesan as herself, so the curling of the hair over the ear will be seen to be

handled in exactly the same way in the pious S. Agatha as in the captivating Giulia. But where the latter differs from all the rest (odious and invidious comparisons apart) is in the subtle and entrancing expression round the mouth which finally renders the portrait a ‘breathing’ likeness, a likeness that by any standards must be accounted a masterpiece. For everything that we know of the personality of Giulia Gonzaga is here expressed—her beauty, her nobility, her grace, her charm, her gravity, her intellectuality and her wit, so that nothing is wanting to fulfil the praises lavished upon

154

Concerning a ‘lost’ Portrait of a Lady her by Ariosto,?? who extolled her for her beauty as a goddess descended from heaven among women: Giulia Gonzaga, che dovunque il piede Volge e dovunque i sereni occhi gira, Non pur ogn’ altra di belta le cede Ma, come scesa dal ciel, Dea Vammira.

At the time of its painting Sebastiano’s portrait of the peerless Giulia excited extraordinary interest and admiration and more than one poem was written in its honour and in praise both of painter and sitter. Of these effusions the Stanze sopra il Ritratto della Signora Julia Gonzaga Colonna written by her secretary, Gandolfo Porrini,?°* are the most relevant to our purpose. Like everyone else he was enchanted by her, but while this did not suffice to make him more than an indifferent versifier, the fact that he knew her well and was a

member of her household at the time that the portrait was painted adds an interest and lends a verisimilitude to the poem that is not to be gainsaid. The magnetism of her presence, her unassailability, the appeal of her conversation, the charm of her laughter and not least her serenity, are all unmistakably conveyed, despite the hyperbole and the welter of conventional epithets with which, like other compositions of its period, the work abounds. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of his description of her person, not because much of what he writes may not apply, but because it 1s invalidated, as documentary evidence, by a repetition ad nauseam of all the stock metaphors in the humanist repertoire. As one would expect, the work is replete with conceits of all kinds, so that of the fifty-seven stanze of which it is composed relatively few are devoted to the actual portrait, the title of the poem, notwithstanding. The first reference to it occurs at the end of the thirteenth verse when Porrini beholds the painter—qual novo e si famoso Apelle—lost in the contemplation of his model: I beheld the good Sebastiano rapt In the contemplation of that urbane countenance. Vidi specchiarsi in quel sembiante humano Tutto pensoso ul buon Sebastiano.

In these words the whole scene is immediately envisaged and is amplified when the poet goes on to speak of the painter’s absorption in the work:

* Who was accused of ‘knowing love too well and poetry too little’.

155

Chapter V Then he began his exalted task. Nature

Placed the brush in his hand and a noble passion Enflamed his art and thence from the beauteous work

He never raised his eyes.

Onde diede principio a Valta impresa, E natura lo stile in man le porse, E Varte d’un gentil desir accesa Gli occhi dal bel lavoro unque non torse.

It would manifestly have been foolish to hope that Porrimi, having introduced the painter, would be content to pass from the artist to his picture; anything so straightforward and, incidentally, so useful would have been entirely out of period and would, besides, have done scant justice to his muse. Instead he proceeded from one eulogy to another, in the course of which he contrived to introduce a number of

oblique allusions to the portrait, allusions which, though inadequate as a means of discovering the ‘lost’ work, are sufficient to confirm its

identification. The operative passages are not, in consequence, those relating to her personal appearance (in respect of which some degree of poetic licence must be allowed for), but to those concerning the incidentals of her costume, which would have no relevance in the

context did they not presuppose some special reference or unique occasion. Thus, after numerous digressions, extending to no less than 10 stanze, he dilates at length upon the beauty of her hair, which he describes as being fair and curling—la chioma inannellata e bionda—bionda, of course, since, according to the poets, no lady had

ever been anything else for centuries; upon the tranquil purity of her brows—le pure sue tranquille ciglia—and upon the charming serenity of her eyes—gli occhi si dolci e si soavi—after which he comes at last to a detailed description of her corsage: The gown, lovely and decorous, Partly reveals the fair young breast The delicate veiling detracting not from its beauty. Quindi ne copre il vago habito honesto E mostra in parte il bel giovenil petto Ne glitoglie il bel velo il suo diletto.

Then, addressing her in person, he goes on to speak of her fairest endowments, those of her heart and mind, and of the jewellery with which she is adorned, which he deems superfluous: For not only with the beauty of thine eyes Doest thou enthrall and rouse the envy of our age, But with wise discorses and lofty thoughts,

156

Concerning a ‘lost’ Portrait of a Lady The chief adornment of thy breast; Thence, with such fair spoils embellished, It has no need of pearls or precious stones, Just as no other golden chain is needed To grace still further the beauty of thy throat.

Perche non sol co’begli occhi legaste E faceste geloso il secol nostro; Ma, con saggi discorsi e voglie caste, Ch’°e la parte miglior del petto vostro; E di si bella spoglia indi Vorneste, Che bisogno non ha di perle, o d’ostro: Come ancho uopo non v’é d’altro monile.

Next he eulogizes her exquisite hands, which are, by contrast, ringless: And if no rings bedeck her hallowed hands, So loved of God all others are bereft, The eternal fame of hers to amplify, Tis but because a Virtue such as hers

No mortal ornament requires or asks. E se sparse di gemme hor non portate Le santissime man, che Dio tant’ama

Che pose tutte altre in povertate Sol per quelle arricchir d’eterna fama; Ragion e ben, che la sua puritate Ornamento mortal non chiede, 0 brama.

Finally, with typical Renaissance candour, his mind strays to otler things: Now of her beauteous form that part which Love Depicts within the heart and from the eye conceals, That of which I ponder in my mind And by my ardent sighs to all betray, He grants me not to others to display, But with his plumes* the cherished part he veils. Hor quel ch’Amor di sua bella persona In cor descrive e a gli occhi asconde, e cela,

E ctoche ne la mente mi ragiona, E con caldi sospir chiaro rwela, Di mostrarlo ad altrui poi non mi dona, Ma con le piume t cart membri vela.

While one would be ill-advised to pretend that Porrini’s interspersed allusions to the portrait would serve in any sense as a catalogue entry, one would be equally ill-advised to disregard them * He refers, of course, to the feathered fan she holds, here thought of as plumes plucked from the wings of Love.

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Chapter V altogether. Either his allusions to such incidentals as the transparent drapery of the corsage, the jewellery, the ringless hands and particularly the placing of the plumed fan have some » relevance in the context or the whole thing makes nonsense, which, despite the extravagant

and high-faluting character of the poem throughout, is hardly to be supposed. Porrini may not be an impressive witness, but he is a witness none the less, whose testimony cannot be discounted. *

*

*

*

*

According to Vasari, the portrait, which became famous, eventually

passed into the possession of Francis [, ‘who kept it in his palace at Fontainebleau’. But as no portrait of Giulia Gonzaga has ever been found there nor any mention of it in the royal archives, the truth of Vasari’s statement, as we have already seen, has sometimes been doubted. Yet that he was justified in saying that it was acquired by the King of France, not, however, by Francis I, but by his son, Henry IL is confirmed by two references that have hitherto been overlooked. Sebastiano del Piombo died in Rome on 21st June 1547 and on the following Saturday, 25th June, an inventory of his goods and chattels was taken at his house in the rione di Campo Marzo. There, among a number of unfinished portraits, four completed ones remained: two of Clement VII, one on canvas and one on slate, one of Baccio Valori on panel and one of Giulia Gonzaga on slate. The entry regarding the latter is as follows—An easel with a portrait of the lady Ciulia

Gonzaga on stone.*34 Now it was this version on stone, or more specifically, on slate, that

was bought by the French ambassador and sent to Fontainebleau. where it was, in fact, recorded a century later by Pierre Dan in his work, Le Trésor des Merveilles de la Maison de Fontainebleau, which

he published in 1642.3° From the entries in this account of ce rare Cabinet des Peintures,

which included Leonardo’s Mona Lisa and Michelangelo’s Leda, described as being presque entiérement gasté, it becomes clear that certain names and descriptions had by tradition been associated with certain pictures, but that with the passing of the years memories had become dimmed and that what had once been certainly known about one picture had now been imperfectly recollected about another. On no other grounds can we account for the odd discrepancies in the * Una scaleta da tener su li li quadri da dipingere cum un quadro de la Signora Gulia Gonzaga in preda.

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Concerning a ‘lost’ Portrait of a Lady entries concerning two female portraits, one by Raphael and one by Sebastiano. The first entry reads thus: Jeanne d’Aragon, Regne de Sicile, estimée la plus belle princesse de son

temps; du quel portrait le Cardinal Hippolite de Medicifitprésent au Roy Francis I.

Quite apart from the little we know about the history of the painting, which, though commissioned from Raphael, but executed by Giulio Romano, appears to have been acquired during his legatine mission to France in 1518/19 by Cardinal Dovizi da Bibbiena, who presented it to Francis I, the entry makes no sense at all in so far as Ippolito de’Medici is concerned, since in 1520, when Raphael died, he was only seven years of age. In the case of the second entry, that referring to the Sebastiano portrait, the name of the sitter had already been lost, so that we find her described as: La soeur du Pape Clement VII sur grand fond d’ardoise; du quel sa Santité fitprésent et qu'elle envoyé au Roy Henri Il.

Here again some of the particulars are patently incorrect. In the first place, Clement VII had no sisters; in the second he died thirteen years before Henry II succeeded to the throne of France, but how or why the description ‘sister of Pope Clement VII’ was substituted for that of Giulia Gonzaga it is impossible to say. It may be assumed, however, that while the foreign name, Gonzaga, became lost in course of time, the Medici association persisted and survived in an altered form. On the other hand, it is not difficult to see how the confusion arose, since

by a strange coincidence both paintings were associated with cardinals, both had Neopolitan connections and both were of ladies celebrated for their beauty. In an amended form the entries would accordingly read as follows: (i) Jeanne d’Aragon [vice] reine of Sicily, considered to be the most beautiful princess of her time; which portrait was presented by Cardinal Bibbiena to King Francis I. (ii) Giulia Gonzaga painted on a large piece of slate [for Cardinal Hippolito de’Medici]; which portrait was acquired by King Henry II.

For that the latter was the picture purchased by the French ambassador after Sebastiano’s death and sent to Henry II 1s substantiated by the following considerations. It was a large portrait painted on slate; it was acquired, together with the Portrait of Clement VII, tor

Henry II, who succeeded his father in April 1547, two months before Sebastiano died; it is one of the three works by his hand known to have been sent into France; it is one of the three, and only three, listed

by Pére Dan, the third being The Visitation which Francis | acquired

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Chapter V in 1521. Of these three only the last named is certainly included in Nicolas Bailly’s?© inventory of pictures in the French Royal Collections, which he completed in 1710, though an unattributed Portrait

of Clement VII (No. 58), perhaps by Sebastiano, is listed in an appendix of tableaux inconnus. What happened to the portrait of La Soeur du Pape Clement VII therefore remains a mystery. A consideration of more immediate and compelling interest than the enigma of the disappearance of the Fontainebleau slate is that of its relationship to the Frankfurt panel. For that there were two versions of the celebrated painting is now no longer in doubt. On Sebastiano’s own telling we know that it was his practice to proceed from a work on panel or on canvas to a copy of it 72 marmo. In a letter to Michelangelo dated 22nd July 1531 he wrote apologizing for the delay in sending him a painting of the head of Clement VII, as he had promised to do, a work that he had executed on canvas and would forward as soon as he had copied it, in accord with the Pope’s wish, on slate. Perdonateme che non vi ho mandato la testa del Papa: io l’o facto s’una tela... Et el Papa vuole che to ne faci un altro sopra pretra. Et subito copiato, ve lo mandero.®" It may be remembered also

that at the time of his death there remained in Sebastiano’s studio a painting of Baccio Valori on panel, perhaps a first version of the superb portrait on slate which is now in the Galleria Palatina in Florence. But there is another and more cogent reason for thinking that the Frankfurt version on panel is indeed the original that was executed at Fondi. The method of painting in oil on stone which Sebastiano developed from 1530 onwards, following his return to Rome after the sack, is

described by Vasari, who also refers to the practice he sometimes adopted of surrounding the picture with an ornamental frame of mixed stones. In Sebastiano’s view the main virtue of the new method lay in what he supposed to be the durability of a support that could be assailed neither by fire nor the worm. But, as Vasari was prompt to point out, there were also disadvantages of another kind inherent in painting on stone, since ‘when they were finished neither the pictures nor the frames could be either moved or transported without the greatest difficulty, owing to their excessive weight’. It is therefore unthinkable, even had he been accustomed to working directly on the stone, that Sebastiano either could or would have encumbered himself

there and back with a large slate support when he was sent to Fondi in fretta e furia with four light horses in the height of the summer of 1532: The poplar-wood panel on which the portrait is painted measures 113.6 X 79 cms. which is only slightly smaller than a Prieta on slate

160

Concerning a ‘lost’ Portrait of a Lady which Sebastiano completed in 1539 for Ferrante Gonzaga, who wished to present it to the Grand Commander Covos of Castille, secretary to Charles V. For over six years there was a long and acrimonious correspondence about the delivery of the work, which now belongs to the church of S. Salvador at Obeda. But even when Sebastiano had been prevailed upon to fulfil the commission, the trials of his patron were not at an end, owing to the difficulties involved in transporting the work, which without its frame of pietre muschie measures 121 X 107 cms.* and with its frame was said to be pesantissimo. Nor was it only its prodigious weight that constituted an impediment to sending it overland, as it was also described as being di natura fragibile. So that even when arrangements had finally been made to ship it from Ostia, it was still thought to be imperative to send it in the charge of someone who knew what he was about, if a

disaster were to be averted. The possibility that the picture painted at Fondi could have been on slate is therefore so remote as to be finally ruled out. In addition to the two versions of the portrait of Giulia Gonzaga which certainly existed and can be shown to have existed for reasons that remain to be adduced, there may also have been a third, as

another portrait di mano di Fra Sebastiano in un marmo was mentioned in 1593 as forming part of Cardinal Scipione Gonzaga’s

collection.°8 Ippolito Capilupi, Bishop of Fano, a close friend of the Gonzaga family, also claimed to have a portrait of the elusive Giulia, painted this time by Titian. Nothing is known of this portrait, but a somewhat enigmatic reference to it occurs in a letter she addressed to the said

Capilupi from Naples on 23rd April 1562,39 in which, having

expressed her pleasure in his letter, long desired, but no longer expected, and having gently rebuked him for his protracted silence, she concluded with this observation: As to your acquisition of a portrait of me, I know not how glad I ought to be, because if it is as beautiful as you say, it could not be from the life—or rather, Messer Tiziano has sought to afford proof of his genius by creating a woman as wholly perfect as she should be and not as I was. However, I’m pleased that the portrait should be in Your Lordship’s possession, as it may easily befall that by means of the picture you will be reminded of real people and in future will be more liberal with your letters. In the meanwhile I commend me to you with all my heart and wish you every contentment you desire.

The slightly ironic tone of the letter ‘part banter, part affection’, 1s * My thanks are due to Senor José Luis Aguiler, First Secretary, the Spanish Embassy in London, for his courtesy in very kindly obtaining for me this hitherto unpublished information.

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Chapter V characteristic, but from the equivocal turn of her remarks about the portrait it would appear that she had no knowledge of it and cared even less. Because Vasari*? maintained that ‘there is scarcely a prince or great lady whom Titian has not portrayed’, it has been assumed that Giulia Gonzaga also sat to him, but a statement to this effect,

without further evidence, is no proof that she did so, nor is it easy to determine when the sittings could have taken place. As far as we know, Titian was never in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, where she

for the most part resided, first in Fondi and afterwards in Naples, following the terrifying raid of the corsair, Barbarossa in the summer

of 1534 and the untimely death of her self-constituted protector, the Cardinal de’Medici, a year later. All things considered it therefore seems unlikely that Ippolito Capilupi’s acquisition was more than one of those idealized likenesses of people whom he had never seen, which Titian was accustomed to undertake on the basis either of descriptions or after portraits by other hands. It is possible that the Cardinal may have commissioned such a portrait when he sat to Titian in Bologna in 1533.

In any event, una pittura d’una

donna* +! was

ready for delivery by the end of the following year, but whether this was an ostensible portrait of the lady Giulia or something quite different and of a more erotic nature we have no means of knowing,

but the use of the word pittura rather than ritratto is not reassuring. That the Capilupi*? portrait came directly from Titian’s studio and was executed in part at least by his hand is not in doubt, inasmuch as

Capilupi, besides being a close friend of the Gonzaga family was also a friend of Titian’s and at the relevant time was holding office as nuncio in Venice. He mentioned the portrait in a letter to the Cardinal of Mantua dated 7th March 1562, but regrettably provided no further information. When he died in 1580 Ippolito Capilupi bequeathed the inheritance to his nephew, Camillo, at whose death the pictures were

returned to the Capilupi palace in Mantua, whence they were subsequently dispersed. Contrary to Sebastiano’s expectations and somewhat ironically, one may think, it is not the version of the Fondi portrait on slate, but the one on panel that has survived. Providentially, it is in an excellent condition, apart from two slight longitudinal cracks and some small areas of repaired damage, in particular a rectangular patch on the upper right-hand side. Also, as far as may be judged from an examination of the work i situ, only in the region of the windowframe, where the curtain seems to have been extended across the * There appear to be no sufficient grounds for identifying this work with the so-called Bella del Belvedere in Vienna. (Venturi A, op. cit. IX, 3, p. 135.)

162

Concerning a ‘lost’ Portrait of a Lady right-hand corner, has it any appearance of having been re-worked.

These, however, are minor blemishes of a kind that in no way detracts

from the superlative quality of a picture that can only be appreciated

in the original, not so much because the warmth of the flesh tones and

the blue-green harmonies of the whole cannot be reproduced, as because the subtlety and fascination of the painting evade descrip-

tion. Incidentally, nothing except the name, Sebastiano del Piombo, is

inscribed on the back of the panel.* *

*

*

*

*

As Sebastiano retained the version on slate and kept it in his studio to the end of his life, partly perhaps for his delectation and partly to impress his patrons, we must assume that it was the original panel, executed at Fondi, that passed into the possession of Cardinal Ippolito de’Medici, who ‘liberally rewarded the artist for his labours’. Unhappily for himself, for his entourage and for his friends, the brilliant young Cardinal did not long survive to contemplate the splendid portrait he had been at such pains to acquire. While on his way to enlist the sympathy and to obtain the assistance of the Emperor} for the furtherance of his Florentine ambitions, he died suddenly at Itri,

without making a will, on 10th August 1535. Almost as if to complete a predestined romance, Ippolito died in the domain and spent the last days of his life in the company of the woman he most passionately revered. The issue with which we are now confronted is that relating to the destination of the Fondi panel immediately after the Cardinal’s premature decease. The qustions that present themselves are these: was it sold along with the rest of his lordly possessions in order to satisfy the demands of his creditors, if only in part? Alternatively, did it revert to the lady Giulia? Or was it perhaps bought by a member of the Gonzaga family, anxious to retain a celebrated work for themselves and their heirs, or by some ambitious collector eager to enhance his cabinet by the acquisition of the portrait of a lady whose portraits were afterwards described by [reneo Affo, the Gonzaga biographer, as being ricercatissimi? In point of fact, none of these things happened. Instead, it became * | was unable to Dr. Eich of the +The Emperor representatives

inspect the back of the panel myself, but was kindly so informed by Stadelsches Kunstinstitut. was at this time in Tunis and the Cardinal, accompanied by of the Florentine fuorisciti, had intended to embark at Naples.

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Chapter V part of the Farnese inheritance, when Paul III possessed himself of all the late Cardinal’s effects, including a writing desk which he had

76 S

placed in his own room. And that the portrait also formed part of the spolium of the Cardinal is confirmed by the payment of 23 scudi 78 batocchi made nearly two years later to a silk mercer, Francesco Gucci, for the provision of a green taffeta curtain ‘to cover the portrait of the Signora Giulia Gonzaga’.* But what in this context may be thought to be even more significant than the recorded payment, is the type and colour of the material chosen to protect the painting, green taffeta being the only colour and texture calculated to harmonize with a portrait in which the sitter herself is attired in the same colour and the same material.*? There can be relatively little doubt that it was at this time that the two great Medici portraits by Sebastiano also became part of the Farnese collection, the Portrait of Clement VII seated and without a beard and the bearded profile of the same Pope having been purloined on the same occasion and from the same source. It may be thought to be indicative, moreover, that the two papal portraits and the portrait of Giula Gonzaga should be listed together in an inventory compiled sometime before 1600 by Fulvio Orsini,** librarian and curator at the Palazzo Farnese, who served three Farnese Cardinals in succession, Ranuccio

Farnese,

Alessandro

Farnese,

‘the great

Cardinal’

and

Odoardo Farnese, to whom Orsini bequeathed his own private collection, which he assembled in the same palace, where he occupied apartments on the second floor. From the undated inventory,+ aforesaid, it appears that the three Sebastiano portraits then formed part of the Orsini collection, possibly as a gift or bequest from the great Cardinal, Alessandro, who died in 1589 and with whom Orsini had been on the best of terms. All three were valued at 50 scudi, the highest valuation for any picture, apart from a Michelangelo drawing of the Last Judgment, which was priced at twice that amount. This is the only mention of the Giulia Gonzaga portrait in the Farnese

inventories, but as the collection is known

to have been

depleted by gifts and legacies during the seventeenth century, it must be assumed to have been among those works that passed into other hands. Nor, if this were the case, would it have represented an altogether surprising choice; it was neither a papal nor a family * Et put scudi ventitre b. settant ‘otto pagati a Maestro Francesco [Gucci], setaiolo, per lopirlceee di uno cortinaggio di taffeta verde che ha fatto per coprire lo ritratto della Signora Giulia Gonzaga. Scudi 23. b. 78. (Dorez, Léon: La Cour de Paul III. Paris 1932, II, p. 100.) + The original inventory no longer exists, but a copy of it is preserved among the papers of Giovanni Vini Pinelli, in the Ambrosiana, Milan.

Concerning a ‘lost’ Portrait of a Lady portrait and had no particular relevance to the Farnese collection as a whole, besides which, it is even possible that after Orsini’s death, and

with the demise of the earlier generation of Cardinals, some uncer-

tainty as to the name of the sitter may have arisen. Now for reasons that will emerge, it seems not improbable that during the opening years of Paul V’s pontificate Cardinal Odoardo may have presented it, perhaps with other pictures, to the Cardinal’s nephew, Scipione Borghese. The two families were on amicable terms; for not only had Camillo Borghese received Odoardo’s support during the conclave, but, out of gratitude to his father’s patron and benefactor, had also taken the same name as the Farnese Pope on his elevation in 1605. Perhaps out of compliment, but more likely from a prudent desire to retain or to attract the favour of the newly elected house, gifts of an extravagant kind were made on all sides, a diamond worth not less

than 4,000 scudi being presented by the Duke of Mantua on this occasion. No policy, having regard to the acquisitive lusts of the Borghese, could, as it happened, have been better calculated to appeal to a Pontiff, notorious for his nepotism, who was disposed by every means in his power to further the ambitions of his nephew. Scipione, a man as unscrupulous as he was wealthy, thus contrived, with the aid of briefs and sequestrations and by a combination of ‘theft, cajolery, trickery and purchase’, to possess himself of property and to assemble a collection on a notable scale. In a spirit of emulation, perhaps of goodwill, presentations from princes and cardinals throughout Italy were also forthcoming, so that it would have been a conspicuous discourtesy and a singular omission had the Farnese Cardinal not been among the donors. But apparently this was not the case, as the Sebastiano portrait of Giulia Gonzaga certainly became part of the Borghese collection, though whether by gift during the early years of the pontificate, when, for the most part, the presentations were made,

or by purchase at a slightly later date we cannot be sure. Paul V died in 1621, Cardinal Odoardo in 1626 and Scipione Borghese himself in 1633, when the Istituzione del Fidecommesso,

or family trust, was

established. Most unfortunately the inventory taken at that time has not survived, so that it is not until 1693*° that a picture not immediately identifiable with the famous portrait, but the famous portrait, nevertheless, is recorded. In an inventory* taken in that year, when it hung

in the Sala dell’Udienza in Palazzo Borghese it is thus described: *T should like to take this opportunity of expressing my thanks to Dott.*s** Paola Della Pergola for her kindness in supplying me with off-prints of the Borghese inventories.

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Chapter V (254) Beneath the said picture [i.e. a portrait of a seated Cardinal by Raphael] a picture 4 palms [in size] the portrait of a lady, No. 405, with a small landscape, in a gilt frame, by Giulio Romano on panel.*

Without the Fidecommesso number of 1633 the portrait would not be identifiable, but as it is the number 405 is clearly marked in white paint on the left-hand side of the Frankfort panel at knee level. At a time when the identity of the artist, as of the sitter, had evidently long since been forgotten, the ascription of the work to the Mantuan court-painter, though stylistically untenable. is not without significance. For while Giulio Romano was not primarily a portraitist and therefore in no sense an obvious choice, the introduction of his name undoubtedly suggests that some lingering Gonzaga association had become attached to the picture, just as the Medici association survived in the description of the version on slate at Fontainebleau. In the much less satisfactory inventory of the Borghese collection compiled by Aldo De Rinaldis*® a century later there is no mention of a portrait of a lady by Giulio Romano, but un ritratto di una donna by Sebastiano del Piombo is recorded for the first time, which leads one to suspect, though one cannot be certain, as no sizes of pictures or Fidecommesso numbers are supplied, that we are here concerned not with two pictures, but with one and the same picture listed under a revised attribution. This seems the more likely, as the two female portraits on slate, which in the inventory of 1693 were attributed to Sebastiano, are given in that of 1790, though less plausibly. to Bronzino. Many of the pictures in this once superb collection, like those in other important cabinets belonging to the Roman nobility, were afterwards dispersed as a result of the panic that spread through Europe following the Reign of Terror and the Napoleonic invasion ‘of Italy. By the turn of the “eighteenth century, ‘in consequence of the heavy contributions levied upon the proprietors of collections’, many ‘capital’ pictures were on sale, which could be procured direct from the Roman palazzi or from bankers and others who happened to be in the city during the French occupation. For the English aristocracy and for the wealthy amateur, both French and English, the opportunities to enhance their collections by the acquisition of some of the major and many of the minor masterpieces of Italian art were boundless, nor were their agents and other dealers slow to profit by

the occasions thus afforded them.*’

* Sotto al detto [un ritratto di un Cardinale a sedere di Raffaello) un quadro di 4 palmi con un ritratto di una Donna del No. 405, con paesino, cornice dorato, di Giulio Romano in tavola.

166

Concerning a ‘lost’ Portrait of a Lady Among the more splendid pictures that arrived in England at about this time Sebastiano’s noble portrait of Giulia Gonzaga was not the least, but precisely when it was imported and by whom it was brought in has not so far been discovered. It can be positively said, however, that it was offered for sale among other pictures belonging to a Mr. J. Mosenau at an auction held in the rooms of Mr. Squibb in Saville Row on the 29th March 1803. Of James Mosenau very little is known, except that he was a French perfumer,* probably an émigré, who rented premises at 40 Wigmore Street from 1790 to 1810 and later at 28, George Street, Hanover

Square, from 1811 to 1812, after which he finally disappeared. In the first entry in the Marylebone Rate Books in 1790 he is entered as

James Mosen(e)au, the name James being inserted in a different hand,

which suggests that the clerk, with typical insularity, had been unable to cope with Jacques, and that Mosenau, to all appearances a newcomer, did not as yet recognize himself as James. In the last entry in the Westminster Rate Books there is a note, ‘all lost through no effects. Rent from Henry Phillips’, Henry Phillips being the auctioneer who conducted the second sale of Mosenau’s pictures in May 1811 and the third and last in January 1813. A perfumer by trade, an amateur by inclination and perhaps a dealer by instinct, Mosenau remains an enigmatic figure, whose position in the art world is difficult to assess, especially when the curiously couched preamble to the sale catalogue of the auction held in 1603 is fully considered. The wording is careful, not to say cautious, in the extreme: The paintings enumerated in the Catalogue are a Selection that have been many years accumulating, purchased from individuals and judicious collectors of undoubted taste and judgment and from different sales of celebrity in London, France and Italy... . The dispersion of many noble cabinets for the last ten years having increased the present collection by the advice of many noble Amateurs, Connoisseurs and Artists, they are now offered to them and to the public and their patronage requested by the sole proprietor.

From this it would appear that Mosenau had not necessarily purchased all the works himself at ‘sales of celebrity’, that he was not himself one of the conoscenti, but had depended for his information upon those who were, and that the pictures were his by right and that as the sole proprietor he was entitled to dispose of them. It is even possible that having established himself in London shortly after the * 1 am most grateful to Miss Marjorie Finnis of the Victoria & Albert Library, who very kindly drew my attention to the fact that in William Holden’s Triennial

Directory, London, 1808 he is so described.

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Chapter V outbreak of the Revolution, Mosenau may have been in a position to advance money on the security of pictures brought into this country by French émigrés, like Vaudreuil,+® Calonne and others, who were prepared, as a last resort to dispose of them, however reluctantly pour une petite ressource de plus. Among the connoisseurs to whom Mosenau may well have been indebted for advice was Calonne,*#?perhaps the most knowledgeable as well as the most eminent of the French collectors, who throughout his years of exile continued to buy and sell pictures, finding in art his one supreme and abiding consolation. The entry relating to the Sebastiano portrait, lot 136, is a case in point: Lot 136 Pope. in the scarce

Del Piombo . . . Portrait of a Noble Roman Lady and Niece to the then A lady much admired by Raphael and though near 300 years past, much present style of cool dressing and is one of the very few by that old and master in this country.

Though patently inaccurate, the entry is clearly based upon some half-remembered mis-information connected with the Fontainebleau version on slate and immediately calls to mind Pierre Dan’s confused account of the portrait of Giovanna d’Aragona by Raphael and that of ‘The Sister of Clement VII’ by Sebastiano. As far as Raphael is concerned ‘the then Pope’ could only be Leo X, whom he predeceased by a year; as to the Niece—a sufficiently vague indication of kinship, in any case and probably not intended to be more—she might equally have been related to the second Medici Pope, Clement VII. In itself this is immaterial,

but is not without significance, inasmuch

as it

serves to emphasize the way in which the Medici association remained attached to the picture. Incidentally and in turn, the reference back to the Fontainebleau slate suggests that the painting had survived until a comparatively recent date, that is to say, until a time within the living memory of an interested connoisseur. Further evidence that Mosenau’s picture and the Frankfurt panel are identical is provided by the allusion to ‘the present style of cool dressing’, a Somparison between Renaissance and nineteenth century styles that one would not have expected, but one only has to juxtapose Sebastiano’s Portrait of Giulia Gonzaga and Gérard’s portrait of the Empress Joséphine to see how startling are the resemblances. * Calonne left London for France in September 1802, but died suddenly a month later. Is it possible that he raised money before his departure on certain pictures left in Mosenau’s keeping, which he hoped to redeem later on? Some such situation might account for Mosenau’s insistence on his right to sell. 7pecconiiing to the Catalogue three lots in the sale came from the Farnese Gallery in

ome.

168

;

Concerning a ‘lost’ Portrait of a Lady As the painting was certainly acquired by Jeremiah Harman, the eminent City banker and sometime Governor of the Bank of England, it may legitimately be supposed that Lot 136 was knocked down to him at the sale held in Mr. Squibb’s rooms on 29th March 1803. From

(4

the end of the eighteenth century Harman, a man of taste, but without

pretentions, had been active in the art world and it was to his house in London that the Orléans collection®® was sent for safe keeping on its arrival in this country. He died early in 1844 and at the time of his death Sebastiano’s Portrait of a Lady still formed part of his ‘exquisite collection’ at Higham House, Woodford in Essex. When speaking of the collection, the unhappy Haydon,°! to whom Harman showed great kindness and generosity, said he had never seen such gems, while in the obituary notice in The Times of 14th February 1844 it was said to have been ‘hardly surpassed by any private collection in Europe’. By order of the executors it was sold at auction by Christie & Manson on the 17th and 18th of May in the same year, and realized the sum of £27,000. Two pictures from the Orléans collection fetched less than £80, but the Sebastiano portrait went for 430 guineas. In the sale catalogue it was thus described: Lot 111... Sebastiano del Piombo . . . Portrait of a Noble Venetian Lady seated at a table with a feather in her hand. She is richly adorned with jewels. The apartment is lighted by a window through which is seen a mountainous Italian landscape.

The portrait was bought by C. J. Nieuwenhuys, a Dutch art dealer resident in England, who acquired it for the gallery of William IL, King of Holland, with the formation of which he had been entrusted.

In the Notice de la galerie des Tableaux de S. M. le Roi des Pays-Bas of 1846 it was once again differently described. Having first been a noble Roman lady and then a Venetian, she now became a Florentine, being listed under the heading—Sebastiano del Piombo ... 164... Une femme de la Famille Medici. As there is no obvious connection between the Venetian painter and the Florentine family, the association might seem an unlikely one, but for the fact that throughout its history there has always remained attached to it a haunting, if indirect, allusion to the Cardinal to whom it owned its inception.

On the death of William II the Dutch collection was dispersed and to the ill-concealed contempt of The Times was offered for sale in Amsterdam in 1850. ‘It must be very mortifying to the present King to dispose of these collections’, ran the sententious comment of the Thunderer, ‘but no doubt he has been induced to the sacrifice by high and honourable reasons’. So that once more, but for the last time, Sebastiano’s Portrait of

169

Chapter V Giulia Gonzaga was in the market, when, from the cabinet of the King of Holland, it passed, for no more than £292 into the possession

of the Stadelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt. There it may be seen today, catalogued as a Portrait of an Unknown Lady—perhaps Renée de France and attributed to Girolamo da Carpi, an artist of so little consequence that the painting, one of the supreme achievements of Renaissance portraiture, is not even included in the handbook of selected masterpieces published by the Gallery. Alas for the supposition that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. For who can doubt that it would neither have been excluded here nor omitted elsewhere, had it been recognized for what it is—the hitherto ‘lost’ portrait of the incomparable Giulia Gonzaga, painted to the order of Cardinal Ippolito de’Medici by Fra Sebastiano del Piombo at her court in Fondi in the high summer of 15327

170

Reference Notes to Chapter V PASTOR

Ludwig

Us

History of the Popes London, 1910

X, pp. 200, 503

DUSSLER Luitpold Sebastiano del Piombo Basle, 1942

p. 116 et seg. Plates 62-68

SANUTO Marius T Diartt 1496-1533 Ed. Berchet, Barozzi, Stefani & Fulin

BENRATH

Venice, 1879-1903 LVI, c 456, c 480

Halle, 1900

DELLA PERGOLA Paola I Dipinti della Galleria Borghese

AFFA Ireno Memorie di Tre Principesse Parma, 1787 p. 33 MILANESI Gaetano Les Correspondantes di Michelange— I. Sebastiano del Piombo

Paris, 1890

Rome, 1959 II, pp. 28, 29 RINALDIS Aldo de Galleria Borghese Rome, 1800

10.

ZERI Federico in Proportiont Florence, 1948 p. 23, n. 2

1

WEIZSAECKER Heinrich Catalog der Gemalde Gallerie des Stadelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt

p. 96 AMANTE Bruto Giulia Gonzaga,

Contessa di Fond

Bologna 1896 p. 374 Note: Unless otherwise stated the quotations used are drawn from this

Frankfurt, 1900

p. 2909 et seq.

source, 12; On

VASARI Giorgio Le Vite de‘piu Eccellenti Pittori Ed. Gaetano Milanesi V, p. 565 et seq.

13.

Alfabeto Cristiano Ed. Benedetto Croce

RODOCANACHI Renée de France Paris, 1896

Emanuel

p. 36 et passim

Bari, 1938

p. 143 et seq.

VOSS Hermann Girolamo da Carpi als Bildnismaler in Stadel Jahrbuch 1924 Frankfurt, 1924 p. 97 et seq.

Florence, 1878-1883

VALDES Giovanni {Juan} di

H. C.

Julia Gonzaza

SORRENTINO Antonis Illustrazione Italiana

LEVI PISETZKY Rosita Storia del Costume in Italia Milan, 1966

Milan, 1932

If, Plate 57

(ey

171

Chapter V 15.

FONTANA Bartolomeo Renata di Francia Rome, 1889 fp. 145

24.

FROHLICH-BUM L. Parmigianino und der Manierismus Vienna, 1921

FREEDBERG

16.

p. 283 lie

Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. i)on

AMANTE

L’Arte Milan, 1900

p. 285

VENTURI A. Op. cit. IX, Pt. 6, p. 604 et seq.

Bruto

Op. cit. p. 144

19.

ANTAL F. Observations on Girolamo da Carpi in Art Bulletin N.Y. June 1948

ALBERTI Leandro Descrittione di Tutta Italia Bologna, 1550 p. 122

pp. 81-103.

PRATELLI Mario Della Via Appia Naples, 1745 p. 130 BODE Wilhelm Jan van Scorel by H. Tonan in Repertorium Kunstwissenschaft, 1889 XII, p. 76 MORELLI Giovanni Italian Painters London, 1893

PALLUCCHINI Ridolfo Op. cit. p. o1 BAROCCHI

IV, p. 265

30.

PALLUCCHINI Ridolofo Op. cit. p. 93

31.

BORGHINI Raffaello Op. cit. II, p. 259

CUST R. H. Hobert Giovanni Antonio Bazzi London, 1906

ARIOSTO Ludovico Orlando Furioso Venice, 1550 Canto 46

p. 98 et seq. BERENSON Bernard Italian Painters of the Renaissance Oxford, 1932

Paola e RISTORI Renzco

Op. cit.

II, p. 83

p. 935

VENTURI A. Bibliografia Artistica in

VALDES Giovanni di Op. cit. p. 51.

18.

S. T.

Parmigtanino: His Works in Painting

BURCKHARDT Jacob Beitrage zur Kunstgeschichte von Italia Basle, 1898

33.

PORRINI Gandolfo Rime Venice, 1551

p. 1, et seq.

Reference Notes 34.

GASPARONI

Francesco

Arte et Lettere

43.

DOREZ Léon La Cour de Paul II Paris, 1932 I, p. 276 & Il, p. 100

44.

NAVENNE Ferdinand Rome et Le Palais Farnese Paris, 1923

Roma, 1865

Appendix to Vol. I, p. 161 et seq. 35.

DAN Pierre Le Trésor des Merveilles de la Maison de Fontainebleau Paris, 1642

I, p. 38

p. 134 et seq.

36.

BOURDON Pierre & LAURENT Vibert Le Palais Farnése in Meélanges, 1909 XXIX, p. 145 et seq.

BAILLY Nicolas Inventaire des Tableaux du Roy

Redigé en 1709-1710

;

Ed. F. Engerand

37,

MILANESI

Gaetano

45,

Op. cit. Paris, 1890 p. 62

DELLA PERGOLA Paola L’Inventario Borghese del 1693 in Arte Antica e Moderna 1964

p. 455

38.

39.

LUZIO Alessandro La Galleria del Gonzaga all’'Inghilterra nel 1627/28 Milan, 1913 p. 275

Venduta

RINALDIS Aldo de Op. cit.

ave

BUCHANAN W. Memoirs of Painting London, 1824

AMANTE Op. cit.

B.

p. 463 40.

40.

VASARI

Il, p. 81

48. Giorgio

Op. cit. VIL, p. 431

41,

VENTURI A. Op. cit. [X, Ptoo, p.135

49.

JOLLY Pierre Calonne 1734-1502 Paris, 1949

50. a2,

PINGAUD Leonc ed. Correspondence Intime du Comte de Vaudreuil et du Comte d’Artots Paris, 1889 I, p. 246

INTRA G. B. Di Capilupi e del suo tempo

Annual Register London, 1844

p. 206

in

Archivio Storico Lombardo:

Giornale della Societa Storica Lombarda 2nd Series. v. X. Anno XX Milan, 1893

51,

HAYDON Benjamin Robert Autobiography and Memoirs London, 1926

Hyp. 710

173

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54

PORTRAIT OF A LADY AS S.AGATHA,

Sebastiano de Piombo,

National Gallery, London

175,

55

ALLEGED PORTRAIT OF GIULIA GONZAGA

—

Variously attributed,

ALLEGED PORTRAIT OF

Coll. Martius, Kiel

GIULIA GONZAGA Variously attributed,

Private Collection

57

ALLEGED

PORTRAIT

OF

ALLEGED

PORTRAIT

OF

GIULIA GONZAGA Variously attributed,

GIULIA GONZAGA Kunsthistorisches Museum,

Palazzo Reale, Caserta

Vienna

176

59

ALLEGED PORTRAIT OF GIULIA GONZAGA Variously attributed,

Jormerly Villa Borghese, now lost

VITTORIA FARNESE (?) (detail) Roman School, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

ie

61

LANDSCAPE

(detail of No. 63)

62

PISCO MONTANO,

TERRACINA

(photograph cf. No 61)

176

63

PORTRAIT OF A LADY, Variously attributed,

Stadelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt

64

GIULIA GONZAGA,

65

(marble relief)

(detail of No. 63)

Private Collection

66

LUIGI GONZAGA (engraving in reverse) S. Zamboni British Museum, London

150

HEAD

67

VESPASIANO GONZAGA (detail) Leone Leoni. Chiesa dell’Incoronata, Sabbioneta

65

RENEE DE FRANCE,

DUCHESS OF FERRARA Anon,

Musée Condé, Chantilly

69

RENEE DE FRANCE, Anon, Musée de Versailles

70

RENEE DE FRANCE

(sketch: Rodi MS) British Library, London

1S1

71

SALOME, Sebastiano del Piombo,

National Gallery, London

72

182

§S. DOROTHEA,

Sebastiano del Piombo, Staaliche Museen, Berlin-Dahlem

3

LA FORNARINA, Sebastiano del Piombo,

Calleria degli Uffizi, Florence

a

74

THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE (BONAPARTE) B.. P.-Geérard Musée de Versailles

Vi Concerning a ‘Lost Portrait’

and its Identification The so-called Portrait of Clement VII and Pietro Carnescchi* in the Galleria Nazionale di Parma is first mentioned in an inventory of pictures in the Farnese Palazzo del Giardino compiled circa 1680, in which it is thus described:

vo

A picture ... on slate. .. . A portrait of Clement VII with a biretta on his head, a long beard, in the act of benediction, with a figure on his left, by fra Sebastiano del

Piombo.!

Later on, but at a date that cannot be specified, though probably in 1735 or thereabouts, when the major part of the Farnese collection was transfered from Parma to Naples,} the picture disappeared and was only re-acquired in 1846, when a rag-merchant, a certain G. Cavaschi offered it for sale to the Gallery. But whence he had it and where it had been in the meantime will now never be known. Both in his first catalogue of the collection published in 1896 and in his second, published thirty years later, Corrado Ricci,? the then Curator made mention of ‘this important painting’. In the former he supplied the information given above, and in the latter he identified the portrait more precisely as A Portrait of Clement VII and a young Cleric and assigned the work to a period following the sack of Rome in 1527, during which time Clement had allowed his beard to grow.

More recently, in the catalogue of the Parma Gallery published in 1939, A. O. Quintavalle? considered the painting from a stylistic point of view and took note of the proposed identification of the ‘young cleric’ as Pietro Carnesecchi, an identification that had been made by Wilhelm Rolfs in 1925.4 * This chapter is based on an article originally published in June 1969 in Apollo. most grateful to the Editor for kind permission to re-use the material.

lam

+ Elizabeth Farnese, the last of the direct line, married Philip V of Spain in 1714.

Their son, Don Carlos, became Duke of Parma in 1731 and King of Naples, as Charles VII, in 1735.

185

Chapter VI In addition to the foregoing catalogue entries, there have also been

numerous critical references to the painting from the nineteenth century onwards. The first occurs in the 1871 edition of Crowe and Cavalcaselli,° in which Clement was described as “giving the benedic-

tion in company of a young chamberlain . . . unfinished as far as the chamberlain is concerned, but perfect as regards the Pontiff’. To this a footnote to this effect was added: Half-lengths of life-size on slate, the ground unpainted: the head of the chamberlain—a young man—barely sketched in. The Pope stands at a parapet on which he rests his left hand holding a handkerchief. The movements are natural and full of ease.

TS

Some thirty years later Pietro d’Achiardi® described the work in approximately the same words, though he analysed it rather more fully and was at pains to stress the evidently advanced age of the Pope, so that as between this portrait and the one in Naples, in which he is shown in profile with a beard, he found himself unable to trace any relationship, though both are by Sebastiano. For this reason he assumed that the latter was painted at the end of the pontificate and suggested that it may have been owing to the death of the Pope that the portrait was abandoned and remains unfinished. Giorgio Bernardini,’ who also published a monograph on Sebastiano in the same year, namely 1908, devoted less attention to the nature of the work, but was insistent upon la grande qualita del maestro, which the painting reveals, notwithstanding its unfinished state and impaired condition. Another writer who was much pre-occupied by the manner in which the Pope appears to have aged in the interval between the painting of the late portrait in Naples and the still later one in Parma

was Adolfo Venturi,® who wrote: Advanced age has destroyed the massive strength of the Naples sketch: the knotted fingers of the right [? left] hand are like gnarled wood: the face also is shrivelled and grey; the disdainful mouth has lost its former resolution; the eye is tired. dimmed and veiled by age, thoughtful, but without benevolence: the iron constitution has been undermined by time, but the willing spirit dominates the tired body in the solemn gesture of benediction.

Indeed, so much older does he appear to be in the Parma portrait that. as Luitpold Dussler? wrote, ‘one would suppose it to have been painted much later, were it not for strong evidence to the contrary’. But not on this account did Dussler find the portrait any less impressive; on the contrary and despite the fact that ‘the individual features of the Pope leave no doubt that the resignation and the infirmity of age have taken the upper hand . . . the broadly conceived

156

Concerning a ‘Lost Portrait’ and its Identification profile, the striking position of the arms, the lofty poise of the head raise the figure to a solemnity and authority that unite the dignity of the function with a purposeful character’.* With regard to the identity of the chamberlain, Dussler was disposed to agree with Rolfs that it may well be Pietro Carnesecchi, who, as Secretary of State, was closely associated with the Medici Pope during the last years of his pontificate. Rolfs’ identification was likewise accepted by Rodolfo Pallucchini,!° though without comment, and received Bernard Beren-

son’s imprimatur in the 1957 edition of his /talian Pictures of the

Renaissance."

What, then, are the arguments advanced by Rolfs in support of his somewhat inprobable thesis? To carry conviction they would need to be unanswerable, but are they? It would seem not, as he omitted to ask himself a relevant question of some importance, while resting his case upon the resemblance he detected between the young chamberlain and ‘the young prelate depicted [in a group] on the ceiling of the Florentine Chamber [la Sala di Clemente VII] which Vasari derived from Puligo’. Rather surprisingly he invoked neither the more accessible portrait of Carnesecchi by, or attributed to, Domenico Puligo nor another portrait assumed to be Carnesecchi by Andrea del Sarto. But this is immaterial, inasmuch as all three likenesses are of

the same young man, which young man is almost certainly Pietro Carnesecchi, though whether there is a sufficiently strong resemblance between any or all of these and the enigmatic chamberlain remains more debatable. Although allowances must naturally be made for individual differences of approach as between one painter and another, they would not, in this instance, account for the discrepancies to be found as between the one head and the other in respect of the general character, the facial angle, the set of the jaw and the style in which the hair is worn. There are, besides, other factors to be taken into consideration, such, for example, as the age of the sitter in the Parma

portrait. Despite the fact that he had already accepted the date of Clement’s

death, namely 1534, as the terminus ante quem,

Rolfs

inclined to assign the picture to a date not later than 1532, in which case Carnesecchi would have been twenty-four years of age, whereas the youthful attendant would appear to be considerably younger than that, a boy perhaps in his early ‘teens, particularly as in Renaissance * The passages quoted above are from a translation by my friend the late Arthur Warner to whom I have much pleasure in acknowledging this and many other kindnesses.

Chapter VI times both men and women tended in their portraits to look older than they actually were. There is, however, no point in pursuing the argument further, because,

as

it turns

out,

the young

chamberlain

is not

Pietro

Carnesecchi (nor could he be, having regard to his age), which is not altogether surprising as the Pope is not, after all, Clement VII either. Instead, they are Paul III and his grandson, Alessandro Farnese, who

7S 50

are here portrayed. It is true that at a glance one bearded pontiff may on occasion look very like another, but a more critical examination of the two heads in question confirms the marked differences between them. Even apart from the general conformation, the dissimilarities m the shape of the head, the slope of the forehead, the setting of the eyes and the structure of the cheekbones should be sufficient to give us pause, before we come to the sharp contrast between the highly individual noses which most clearly differentiate the two men. For whereas Clement’s nose is straight and wedge-shaped, Paul’s is curved and rounded with backward-flaring nostrils of a marked type.* Owing to the partially obscurig nature of the long beard that came into fashion after the sack of Rome, it is less easy to be specific about the mouth, which is always a salient feature. For although in Sebastiano’s profile portrait of the Medici Pope the chiselled lips and firm chin are visible, in Titian’s portrait of the Farnese Pope the lower part of the face is largely concealed. The differences in physiognomy between these two contrasted personalities is emphasized still further when the busts are seen in profile on approximately the same scale. As far as the inventory of c. 1680 is concerned, it may not be inappropriate to remark that the foregoing misidentification was by no means the only one contained in it. For instance, Sebastiano’s portrait of the beardless Clement painted in 1526 is there described as a portrait of Alessandro VI, the Borgia Pope, to whom he bore no resemblance. Again, in the case of Titian’s group portrait of Paul III and his two nipoti Alessandro and Ottaviano, the latter, who is obviously the younger brother, is said to be their father, Pier Luigi. Happily, both these errors, being more blatant than the one under discussion, have long since been corrected. The traditional identification of the Pope in the Parma portrait as Clement VII has almost certainly been accepted during the past three * There is a half-length portrait of him as a Cardinal in the Capodimonte Gallery in Naples,

which

is thus

described

by De

Rinaldis—Nel personaggio

ritratto

si

riconosce u futuro Paolo Ill... al naso grosso e lungo tondeggiante all’estremita cascante su la bocca larga dalle labbra strette e sottile ... (Aldo De Rinaldis: Pinacoteca del Museo Nazionale di Napoli p. 209)

188

Concerning a ‘Lost Portrait’ and its Identification centuries because the other portraits of Paul III, all painted towards the end of his pontificate, depict him, without exception, as a bent and exceedingly decrepit old man, while in contrast, the personage in the double portrait, though manifestly aged, is still upright, as he may well have been at his elevation, some eight or nine years before he sat to Titian for the first time. The reason why d’Achiardi could discover no relationship between the bearded portrait by Sebastiano in Naples and the half-length in

76 (es

Parma, and the reason why he, Venturi and Dussler found themselves

so perplexed by the extent to which the Pope appeared to have aged in the later portrait is now explained—they are not portraits of the same man. At his death in 1534 Clement was only fifty-six, whereas at his accession in the same year Paul was already sixty-seven years of age. Now that the Pope’s identity as Paul III has been established, the identity of the boyish figure on his left can no longer be in doubt. Within the historical context there is no one who it could be except his grandson,

Alessandro

Farnese, who, though not of canonical

age

received the purple at a consistory held on 18th December 1534! during the first months of his grandfather’s pontificate. At the time Alessandro was only fourteen years old and was still a student at Bologna University, whither the red hat was conveyed to him. On 10th May of the following year the Cardinals voted for his introduction to the Sacred College, to which he and his equally youthful cousin, Guido Sforza, who had also been raised to the Cardinalate,

were presented two days later. Thereafter he received one office and one preferment after another in addition to ‘a multitude of benefices, bishoprics, abbeys and priories’ and as if this were

not enough,

immediately upon the death of Ippolito de’Medici in August 1535 he was appointed Vice-Chancellor, an office which he held with distinction for fifty-four years until his death in 1589. For the satisfaction of critical opinion some physical proof may reasonably be required to support the strong presumptive evidence that it is the young Cardinal, Alessandro Farnese who is here represented. In the absence of any other youthful likeness of him that might serve as a prototype, this is no easy task, as we are under the necessity of having to compare the unfinished figure in Parma with later examples executed at different periods and by different hands. It will at least be conceded, however, that the young chamberlain is of the requisite age, that is to say, he is a boy of about fourteen, whose facial porportions correspond so closely with those seen in an accepted portrait of Alessandro painted by Titian a few years later to warrant a comparison. The general maturing of the features in the interval with the addition of the short beard as portrayed in the

189

Chapter VI eraceful half-length in Naples must naturally be taken for granted, yet even so, the oval contour of the head, the depth of the brow, the length of the nose, the growth of the hair and the setting of the eyes, with their steadfast gaze, all contribute to the identification of the

54 83

sitter as being, in each case, the same person. Inevitably, it is in the beardless head of the adolescent that the square chin and pronounced upper lip with its sharply defined cleft are seen more clearly, yet oddly enough, a better comparative study is afforded by a portrait medal of the Cardinal struck in later life, which reveals the same conformation of the brow and the upper lip in particular. In most descriptions of the painting the Pope is said to be standing at a parapet and was assumed by Venturi to be in the act of blessing a crowd, a supposition that fails to carry conviction, owing to a lack of amplitude in the gesture. Alternatively, he might be blessing an assembly, in which case a consistory might seem more likely, but having regard to the relationship of the two figures some more precise interpretation seems to be required, inasmuch as the Cardinal’s presence is not made clear in pictorial terms, unless it be related to the object which the Pope holds in his left hand. This object. which has been said to be a handkerchief, by the only critics who have ventured to refer to it, is, however, a solid object, as may be seen by the tensed fingers with which it is held, and proves on closer inspection to be a purse or alms-bag, the strings of which are visible under the Pope’s left sleeve. Just such an alms-bag, from which a distribution is being made by a deacon, can be seen in Lorenzo Lotto’s painting, S. Antonio e Diaconi, in the church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo in Venice.

Though the composition is characterized by a certain solemnity, the ceremony is not a liturgical one, nor is it one for which a precedent can be found. The Pope is not wearing vestments, but is dressed in the customary rochet, mozzetta and camauro without the addition of a stole, which is sometimes worn when the Pope is depicted in the act of benediction; also, like Leo X, but unlike Julius [I in their portraits by

Raphael, he wears no rings. It is a pity that nothing can be said about the proposed dress of the boy Cardinal, as the existing under-paint gives no indication, just as no comment can be made about the relative height of the two figures, owing to Sebastiano’s tendency to allow his principal sitters to dominate the scene, by representing them as being larger than their subordinates or others of lesser importance. And as far as the Farnese Pope was concerned, perhaps not altogether without reason, when one remembers his retort to the Emperor, Charles V, who claimed to be the eldest son of the Church, that he

might well consider himself to be the eldest son, but that he [the Pope|however unworthy, was the Church itself. But if Paul II was the

190

Concerning a ‘Lost Portrait’ and its Identification greatest of the late Renaissance Popes, his grandson, Alessandro, also

grew up to be a prelate of character and distinction. A man of probity and a lavish patron of the arts, he later claimed that he had three sources of pride—as a Cardinal, the Gest;* as a Prince, Caprarola;+} as a man, his daughter, Clelia. This might be his own boast, but the

Emperor’s estimate of his quality is also worthy to be remembered, for he once remarked that ‘if the Sacred College were composed of men

like

Alessandro

Farnese,

it would

be

the

most

illustrious

assembly in the world’. Vasari’s contention that Sebastiano became progressively indolent and self-indulgent after he was appointed to the prombo, so that he would spend days together gossiping to the neglect of his work, would scarcely suffice to explain the unfinished state of the first (and apparently the last) papal commission he received under the new dispensation. Can it have been that the work was deemed to be unsatisfactory from an iconographical standpoint and was therefore abandoned? On the face of it this seems possible, as the interrelationship of the two figures is by no means clear and in all probability would not have been appreciably clearer had the second figure been completed. The fact that it is on slate adds a further complication, because, as we know from one of his letters to Michelangelo, it was not Sebastiano’s habit to work direct on slate,

but to make a copy on slate of a work previously executed on panel or on canvas, at which stage any adjustments that might be necessary would normally be made. But, regrettably, we know nothing about this or any other aspect of the commission, so that the whole matter remains obscure. We are now in a position to correct a partially erroneous statement made by Vasari,!* to re-interpret an ambiguous passage and to claim the discovery of a picture hitherto presumed to be lost. ‘He also painted a portrait of Paul III immediately after his elevation,’ wrote Vasari in his life of Sebastiano del Piombo, ‘and began his son, the Duke of Castro, but as with so many other things he began, he did not finish it’. Understandably, up till now it has always been assumed that two separate portraits were here involved, but is there any intrinsic reason why this should be so? And as two members of the Farnese family are mentioned together, might not a double portrait be PdES REDADS Jesuit Church in Rome, built by Vignola and Giacomo Della Porta at the Cardinal’s expense. + His Villa at Caprarola, near Viterbo, which was also built by Vignola. + Ritrasse il medisimo papa Paolo Farnese subito che fu fatto sommo pontifice, e comincio il duca di Castro suo figlio, ma non lo fini; come non fece anche molto altre cose, alle quali avea dato principio.

17

Chapter VI implied? Obviously, it might, in which case would the unfinished

Parma portrait correspond, sufficiently nearly, to what Vasari had to say? In fact it would. Here we have an undisputed portrait by Sebastiano, a portrait that has been shown to be of Paul III and a portrait that can be precisely dated. It is the only likeness of the Farnese Pope by Sebastiano, and was painted at a time when he was still erect in bearing, so that it must antedate by several years the more famous portraits of him by Titian in the 1540s. Vasari also tells us that it was painted ‘immediately upon his elevation’. Paul III received the tiara on 13th October and is portrayed by Sebastiano in the red velvet, furlined mozzetta and camauro worn in the winter from the feast of St. Catherine, 25th November,

until Ascension Day, which in the

following years fell on 8th May. The picture can therefore be dated with confidence to the first year of his pontificate. A discrepancy arises, however, with reference to the unfinished figure, which Vasari believed to be a portrait, not of the Pope’s grandson, Alessandro, but

of his son, Pier Luigi, who was thirty-one years of age at his father’s elevation and did not become Duke of Castro until three years later. That Vasari, writing many years later and proceeding almost certainly upon hearsay should have confused the two cannot really be thought to constitute any impediment to our identification. All he knew was that Sebastiano had painted the Farnese Pope during the early months of his pontificate and had left a portrait of one of his descendants unfinished. His supposition that the descendant in question was his son, rather than his grandson may be thought natural enough and is not a slip of any great moment, when one reflects upon the erroneous statements that gain currency even in our own time after the lapse of a few years, notwithstanding all the resources now at our disposal. The fact that Sebastiano’s portrait of Paul III is a recorded work and is mentioned in connection with an unfinished portrait of a descendant renders it the more certain that the picture alluded to is the one in Parma, where it was listed for the first time, significantly enough, in a Farnese inventory. With this discovery of Sebastiano’s hitherto lost portrait of Paul IIL, a theory put forward by Tietze-Conrat!* in 1946 is finally disproved. In an article published in the Gazette des Beaux Arts she propounded the view that Titian’s great portrait of Pope Paul, without the camauro in Naples may have been based upon a lost original by Sebastiano, which original she conjectured to be the missing portrait recorded by Vasari. ‘I admit that this interpretation is somewhat artificial’, she wrote, and that ‘a much simpler explanation would be

f92

Concerning a ‘Lost Portrait’ and its Identification to drop Titian altogether and to identify the bare-headed Pope with Sebastiano’s

lost painting’.

In this, as

we

now

know,

she was

mistaken, nevertheless one can sympathize with her observation that in this superb portrait Titian so far surpassed himself, as to suggest

the intervention of another hand. In only two other examples did he come within range of it and then in contrasting styles; in his powerful, impressionistic portrayal of the ebullient Pietro Aretino and in his quiet, sympathetic portrayal of the mild Ranuccio Farnese, already cited. In the end, however, she remained in two minds, finding herself unable, on the one hand, ‘resolutely to deny it to Titian’ or, on the other, to suppress

her understandable

misgivings.

33 32

But if Tietze-

Conrat’s theory is not one that can any longer be entertained, the resemblances in some respects between the Capodimonte Portrait of Paul IIT and the Hermitage so-called Portrait of Cardinal Reginald Pole cannot be gainsaid, just as it must be allowed that the inward-

ness of the characterization in the former is a trait that we associate less readily with Titian than with Sebastiano. For some reason, which he does not specify, Venturi, too, was of the opinion that the Capodimonte masterpiece may not have been painted direttamente dal vero, but while it is in the treatment of the hands and the apparel rather than in the treatment of the head that he recognized Titian’s peculiar grandezza pittorica, he did not quetion its authenticity, which is perhaps just as well, inasmuch as the existing documentation is not definitive. In 1908 the Parma portrait, not of Clement VII and Pietro Carnesecchi, as was formerly supposed, but of Paul III and his grandson, Alessandro Farnese, was described as being in uno stato di

non buona conservazione,* a state that has inevitably worsened during the intervening years. Had the painting been on panel or on canvas, it could have been cleaned in the normal way like any other picture and measures could have been taken to check the flaking of the paint, but being on slate there is apparently little or nothing that can be done to prevent its further deterioration, a situation that is the more ironic in face of Sebastiano’s conviction that works executed in oil on stone, being exempt from injury by fire or the worm, would endure for ever. A typical Sebastiano in all formal respects, in the nobility of its detachment and in the profoundness of its concentration, it remains, none the less, a great picture: and, in its imperfections, a witness to the fallibility of human judgment, the frailty of hope and the vanity of human wishes. * Bernardini: Op. cit. p. 52.

193

Reference Notes to Chapter VI CAMPORI Giuseppe

BERNARDINI Giorgio

Raccolta di Cataloghi ed Inventaru Modena, 1870

Op. cit. p. 02

p. 234

VENTURI A. Op. cit. IX, Pt. V, p. 68 et seq.

RICCI Corrado La Reggia Galleria di Parma Parma, 1896

DUSSLER Luitpold Op. cit. p. 69 et seq.

p. 226 RICCI Corrado La Galleria di Parma e La Camera di S. Paola Parma, 1926

10.

PALLUCCHINI Rodolfo Op. cit. p. 169

ile

BERENSON

pl. 27 QUINTAVALLE A. O. La Reggia Galleria di Parma Parma,

London, 1957

1939

p. 164

pp. 101, 102

PASTOR Ludwig History of the Popes London, 1912 II, p. 138 et seq.

ROLFS Wilhelm Klemens VII und Pietro Carnesecchi in

Repertorium

fur

Kunstwissenschaft

Berlin, 1925 XLV, p. 117 e¢ seq.

ou

Bernard

Op. cit.

CROWE & CAVALCASELLE Op. cit. Il, p. 349

13.

VASARI Giorgio Op. cit.

V, p. 582 14.

TIETZE-CONRAT

E.

Tittan’s Portrait of Paul III in

ACHIARDI Pietro d’ Opace: p. 252 et seq.

194

Gazette des Beaux Arts, 1946 Series 6. v. 29

p. 73 et seq.

75

APOPE AND AN ATTENT FIGURE,

Sebastiano del Piombo, Galleria Nazionale, Parma

76

CLEMENT VII,

Sebastiano del Piombo,

Capodimonte, Naples

6

AUL III, Titian, Capodimonte, Naples

78

CLEMENT vit (detail), Sebastiano del Piombo,

Capodimonte, Naples

79

CLEMENT VII

(medal) British Museum, London

198

80

PAULI

(detail ofNo. 77)

PAUL III (medal), British Museum, London

82

ALESSANDRO FARNESE, Titian,

Capodimonte, Naples

83

ALESSANDRO

FARNESE (medal), British Museum, London

200

$84

ALESSANDRO FARNESE

(detail ofNo. 75)

Vil Epilogue

From the foregoing it will have become apparent that as a pursuit art criticism enjoys neither the authority of science in terms of proof nor the independence of poetry in terms of licence. The disciplines, to be sure, are akin, but whereas in the natural sciences and in the creative

arts the ends sought may ultimately be attained and either shown or recognized, albeit by different criteria, to be valid, in art criticism and in historical research there are no absolute standards of reference, so

that as often as not, when irrefutable documentary proof is wanting, we have perforce to remain satisfied with approximations. Too much depends upon chance for the task to be other than precarious, while owing to the hazards of time there are many questions to which the answers can no longer be found and many links in the chains of evidence, which no amount of application, skill, ingenuity and flair on the part of historians is adequate to supply. Coincidences of one kind or another also contribute to the complexities, the timing of the researches, the chance discovery of material that may be found, but cannot be sought, the generosity of other scholars, who may be willing to impart information incidental to their own studies, but proper to one’s own. In order to determine the attribution of a picture or to identify the sitters intuition, knowledge and judgment are essential, but some degree of flexibility is also required, for while without an hypothesis it is impossible either to begin or to proceed, there must be a readiness on the part of the critic to modify or to abandon it at any stage of an investigation. Also, operating as he does in a world beset by difficulties, he must advance with caution and circumspection and must beware, above all, of becoming so enamoured of his thesis as to be

betrayed into the subterfuge of what has already been described as the Critic’s Gradual—it could be—it might be—it must be—it is—and all this without a shred of additional evidence to support such a conclusion. As a case in point, it is one thing for an eminent, erudite, but dispassionate scholar to suggest that a drawing mught be by

201

Chapter VII

Giorgione, and quite another for an eminent, erudite, but partisan scholar to insist, without further evidence, that the said drawing must

be by Giorgione and that there can be no doubt about it. This will not do, inasmuch as it is surely axiomatic that scepticism in a critic 1s ever to be preferred to credulity. Themes based wholly or largely upon supposition are likewise to be distrusted, particularly if the arguments advanced are more learned than not. Thus should you wish to show that the pose of a Venetian Madonna in a Sacra Conversazione painted in 1540 was derived from that of a Florentine Madonna carved in 1524 (a carving which the painter had never seen) you would not be in a remarkably strong position, if you could only do so by positing an antique prototype as the original model and then proceeding on this assumption to develop your theme on the following lines—(1) that the said prototype may have been the Arundel Muse, (11) that the said Arundel Muse may have been in Venice, where the said Florentine sculptor may have seen it in 1494 when he happened to be there on a brief visit, (111) that the said Florentine sculptor may have used it as a model some thirty years later, (iv) that the said Venetian painter may have made a drawing of it in the knowledge that it had been used by the said Florentine sculptor, whom the said Venetian painter set out ‘as an act of combined homage and challenge’ to emulate in his own idiom. And anyway what, at the end of it, does all this amount to?—to a tale full of sound and fury . . . signifying nothing’.* Equally unacceptable is the notion that Michelangelo’s Taddei Tondo owed its inception to the Mantuan sarcophagus, which, in all probability, he neither saw nor could have seen. All this suggests, by implication, that no artist, whatever his endowments, ever had an original idea or was capable of learning from his own observations. But nothing, after all, is ever indigenous, things always come from somewhere else, like the mal francese which, notably in France, came from Naples. When faced by the portrait of an unknown sitter by a disputed hand the critic or historian in search of a solution to both problems has a variety of resources at his command, of which the most fundamental is the internal evidence of style. But to imagine, as the adherents of one school have been prone to do, that style criticism is definitive and superior to documentation should the two happen to conflict, or is characterized by anything approaching infallibility is to make claims that cannot be sustained. Who, for instance, would think

of attributing the Risen Christ of the Minerva to Michelangelo on * It is difficult to believe that this farrago of nonsense was ever published, as it was, in a learned journal.

202

Epilogue stylistic grounds or would be prepared to accept the attribution were the work not fully documented by the extant contract and the existing correspondence? It would therefore seem expedient on all occasions of doubtful disputation to have recourse to other sources of information to supplement the inherent stylistic evidence which, because it involves a subjective judgment, cannot, in the nature of the case, provide an irrefutable criterion and must to that extent always remain suspect. One has, moreover, only to recall the confusion worse confounded resulting from the exercise of pure style criticism as applied to the five pictures under review, particularly to the fourth, to perceive its limitations as a touchstone. Nor is this recourse to such aids as may be available by any means to be despised, since sometimes, though by no means always, they may serve to confirm or to nullify proposed solutions to outstanding problems. As to my own solutions in the present context, in which the principal pictures discussed all happen, quite fortuitously, to be by Sebastiano del Piombo, I make no doubt that they will be exceedingly unpopular. A traditionalist myself, |can sympathize with those, who, being more or less content with the status quo, would infinitely prefer to leave well (or ill) alone, rather after the fashion of a friend of mine, who declined to enquire more deeply into certain religious teachings, believing it be, as she put it, ‘more pious like that’. More pious it may be, more enlightened it is not; but who, after all, ever supposed piety and enlightenment to be synonymous terms? *

*

*

*

*

In each case the enquiry was undertaken for a different reason and from a different point of view. In the case of The Concert, having always been uneasy about its attribution to Titian and how much more so to Giorgione, | became increasingly convinced that Sebastiano’s was the more likely hand, and if so, that the picture was in all probability the ‘lost’ portrait of the musicians, Verdelot and Obrecht. Everything throughout my researches combined to favour this conclusion, which could not be disputed were it not for a break of some thirty-five years in the continuity, or rather perhaps presumed continuity of its history, when we do not know where it was. The possibility that it passed into the possession of Paolo del Sera’s father, Cosimo, following the death of its last recorded owner, Ridolfo Sirigatti, in 1608 is, however less remote than the possibility that in an age noted for its collezionismo Sebastiano’s much-coveted early

203

Chapter VII

masterpiece was either lost or destroyed. But unless or until this hypothesis can be shown to be correct, it remains an hypothesis and is not offered as a conclusive proof. Incidentally, a similar hiatus occurs in the history of the Frankfurt panel as there is a lapse of about thirty years from the time that it was last recorded as being in Fulvio Orsini’s collection, which subsequently formed part of the Farnese inheritance, and the time that it is first numbered among the pictures in the Villa Borghese. The angle of approach to the Longford Castle portrait was entirely different. Here there was no question of seeking to identify the sitter, but, on the contrary, of recognizing in the sitter the likeness of Tullia d’Aragona, the famous courtesan, who is well-known to us from the

vivid contemporary accounts of her appearance and personality. As to the National Gallery double portrait when in 1962 its title was changed from being a Self-Portrait of Sebastiano del Piombo and a Cardinal to Cardinal Ippolito de’Medici Conferring an Office on Monsignor Mario Bracci by Giorolamo da Carpi the change seemed so improbable as scarcely to merit serious consideration and in the event this reaction proved to be justified. Of the five pictures examined only the female portrait in Frankfurt afforded one of those rare artistic experiences—the moment of instant recognition. This happened while I was looking through a German periodical for something else, when as I turned the pages I suddenly saw for the first time and then only in an engraving the Portrait of an Unknown Lady—perhaps Renée de France attributed to Girolamo da Carpi. Whereupon, without a moment’s hesitation, I said to myself ‘No, the “lost” portrait of Giulia Gonzaga by Sebastiano del Piombo’. Thereinafter the extensive researches [ undertook all contributed to confirm the identification almost beyond a peradventure. The experience in face of the alleged Portrait of Clement VII in Parma belongs to a different category. On this occasion no gleam in the eye was involved, since all that was needed was careful observation and a sufficiently close acquaintance, in a manner of speaking, with both Popes, Clement VII and his successor, Paul III. With the

establishment of the latter for the former as the principal sitter there was no difficulty in recognizing in the unfinished subsidiary figure the likeness of his grandson, Alessandro Farnese. Though still not invariably accepted, since their first publication in 1969 the new identifications have been fully endorsed by such eminent authorities as Deocletio Redig de Campos, James Byam Shaw, Mauro Lucco and the late Johannes Wilde. No matter how controversial some of these conclusions may prove to be and no matter how inconvenient, at least they cannot be said to

204

Epilogue be new-fangled.

Since together with Giorgione and Titian, Sebas-

tiano’s was the third major name formerly suggested for The Concert and since (notwithstanding nine other suggested attributions) it was his name that was attached to the Portrait of an Unknown Lady and likewise to the double portrait of A Cardinal and an Official, when they first arrived in this country in the early nineteenth century, a renewed attempt to restore his claim to both pictures can hardly be regarded as a startling innovation. With regard to the Longford Castle and the Parma portraits here it was only the identities of the sitters that came under review, as the attributions to Sebastiano were not in dispute. If, therefore, on intuitive and stylistic grounds, supported by a formidable body of circumstantial evidence, two of the supreme achievements of Renaissance portaiture, The Concert in Florence and the Giulia Gonzaga in Frankfurt may justly be assigned to Sebastiano del Piombo, along with the other great paintings that cannot be denied to him, may we not, in echoing Michelangelo’s sentiment that he was

‘altogether unique’, deem ourselves to be in excellent company? *

*

*

*

*

Despite its prerogatives and the intellectual stimulus it affords, the assignment of the critic cannot, in some ways, be regarded as other than invidious, since, however unjustifiably, the imputation of a sense

of superiority and a certain arrogance of attitude in his approach seems to be inevitable. So that, while it is a hazard that cannot be taken into account, his function, 1n its actual performance, is not such

as to make for popular acclaim. Perhaps this arises from a subconscious recognition that the exercise of the critical faculty and the practice of the theological virtues are not always compatible. It is futile to allow faith to impair or hope to impede the critique of the judgment and useless to invoke charity at the expense of truth. In simpler terms, it is not what one believes, not what one hopes may ensue that must condition one’s endeavours, but what, irrespective of

personalities, best serves the attainment of the end in view. The task of the critic is therefore essentially rigorous; a task to be performed dispassionately, without prejudice, without partiality and without prevarication. This represents the ideal; but these, alas, are councils of perfection which, like all precepts, are ever easier to formulate than to fulfil... e basta!

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O’Brien, Grace The Golden Age of Italian Music, London, n.d.

Masson, Georgina

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Monasour, Bruno Tesori della Gallerie di

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210

Pastor, Ludwig History of the Popes. 40 vols., London, 1891— 1953 trans.

Clovis

Whitfield,

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Minanest, Gaetano Les Correspontantos di Michelange tiano del Piombo, Paris, 1890

Paxiuccuint, Rodolfo Sebastiano Viniziano, Milan, 1944

Picnarti, T. Giorgione,

Mesce.uino, Giovanni La Chiesa di S. Marco, Venice, 1753 Micuie., Marcantonio Notizia d’Opera del Disegno Vienna, 1888

Patiuccuint, Rodolfo Tiziano, Florence, 1969

Sebas-

Pincaup, Léone Correspondence Intime du Comte de Vaudreuil et du Comte d’Artois, Paris, 1889

Pirro, Andre Obrecht a Cambrai Amsterdam, 1918

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Popr-Hennessey. John Capodimonte, Milan.

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Select Bibliography Sanuto, Marius IT Diarit, 1496-1533, ed. Berchet Barozzi, Stefani e Fulin, 58 vols., Venice, 1879-1903

Porrini, Gandolfo Rime, Venice, 1551

Pratevir, Mario Della Via Appia, Naples, 1745

Savint Branca, Simona IT Collezionismo Veneziano

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Ricci, Corrado La Reggia Galleria di Parma, Parma, 1896 Ricuter, G. M. Guorgione da Castelfranco, Chicago, 1937 Riwotro, Carlo Le Maraviglie dell’Arte, Venice, edn., 2 vols., 1835/37

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Scuiavo, Armando IT Palazzo della Cancelleria, Rome, 1964 ScuMiT-KALLENBERG, L.

Practica Cancelleria Apost, Munster, 1904 Scuusrinc, Paul Die Kunst der Hochrenaissance Berlin, 1926

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Srraetren, Edmond von der Musique aux Pays-Bas, New York, 1867 Srraeten, Edmond von der

History of the Violoncello etc., London, 1825 Srraeren, Edmond von der Les Musiciens Neérlandais en Italie, Brussels,

1882 Suma, W. Le Titien, Paris, 1935 Tanrant, L. Centofante Notizie di Artisti tratte dei Documenti Bisant,

Rinaupis, Aldo de Roma: Galleria Borghese, Rome, 1950

Pisa, 1897

Tantitto, A. Mignosi

Rinacpis, Aldo de Catalogo della Pinacoteca del Nazionale di Napoli, Naples, 1911

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Sartori, Claudio Ottaviano dei Petrucci, Florence, 1948

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General Index Note: Where appropriate the dates given for sovereigns are regnal dates

Aaron, Pietro (1489-1545), 25

Boreta, Lucrezia, Duchess of Ferrara

Asate, Nic(c)olé dell’ (1509-1571), 35, 146, 148, 149

(1480-1519), 32 Boscuint, Marco (1613-1678), 53

Accademia Fiorentina, 20 Accott1, Bernardo, |’unico Aretino (1450-1535)

56 Asano, Taddeo (fl. 1510), 8. 9 Antinori, Lorenzo (fl. 1541), 20

‘ Aracona, Eleanora d’, Duchess of Ferrara, 24

Bracct, Mario (fl. 1532), 112 et seq., 120 et seg. 5

Bracroxint, Francesco (1566-1645), 57 Bramante, Donato (1444-1514), 57, 118 Braysroke, Lord (1719-1798), 90

Bronzino, Agnolo di Cosimo (1503-1572), 138,

166

Luigi d’, Cardinal (1474-1519), 101

Brunett1, Mario (fl. 1800), 39

Tullia d’ (1508-1556), 100, 101 et seq. Celio (b. c.1543), 102, 105

Byam Suaw, James, 204

Burauint, Bartolomeo (fl. 1650), 52

Arrosto, Ludovico (1474-1533), 155 Artorti, Bonfrancesco (fl. 1487), 24

Arricnant, Pierre (fl. 1529), 19

Catonne, Charles Alexandre de (1734-1802),

168 Catvin, John (1509-1564), 28, 39 Barireau, Jean (d. 1491), 24

Bartout, Cosimo (1503-1573), 20 Bascuents, Evaristo

(1617-1677), 35

Bassano, Jacopo dal Ponte (1514-1592), 52

Leandro (1557-1622), 52 Bexuint, Gentile (d. 1507), 8

Giovanni (d. 1516), 8, 32 Bernini, Lorenzo (1598-1680), 45

Pietro (1562-1629), 45

Cape.o, Bianca, Grand Duchess of Tuscany

(1543-1587), 46 Capiurt, Ippolito, Bishop of Fano (1511-1580),

161/2 Carneseccul, Pietro (1508-1567), 134, 185, 187

Caro, Annibale (1507-1566), 134, 143 Carpaccio, Vittorio (d. c.1525), 5

Carr, Holwell (d. 1831), 111, 135 Caste.u Manis, Petrus (fl. 1532), 115

Borghese Collection, 111, 138, 165 et seq., 204

Cuartes V, Holy Roman Emperor (1516-1556), 49, 62, 103, 119, 190 Cuicr, Agostino (1465-1520), 57, 58, 100 Cuement VII (de’Medici) (1523-1534), 18, 115, 116, 119, 185-193 passim, 205

Borcuese, Scipione, Cardinal (1576-1633) 122,

Cosos, Francisco de los (d. 1547), 116

Bissiena, see Dovizi, Bernardo

Borssart, Jehan, the Elder and Younger, 17

Bora, Caterina (fl. 1531), 24 Borpvone, Paris (1500-1571), 146, 148

165

Collectors and Connoisseurs, 48 et seq.

213

Index Cotonna Pompeo, Cardinal (1479-1532), 115

Vespasiano (1486-1528), 134 Vittoria, Marchioness of Pescara (1490-1547), OT Wn 137 Conte, Jacopino del (1510-1598), 138

Farnese, Alessandro, Cardinal (1520-1589), 122, 144, 188, 189 Elizabeth, Queen of Spain (1692-1766), 185 Odoardo, Cardinal (1576-1626), 136, 164, 165

Corpus Christi Procession, 122

Ottaviano, Duke of Parma (1524-1586), 188

Correccio, Antonio Allegri (c.1489-1534), 50

Pier Luigi, Duke of Castro (1503-1547), 191,

Cortesans, Roman, 99 et seq.

Venetian, 99

Costa, Lorenzo (c.1459-1534), 34 Costume, Clerical, 51, 52, 57, 119, 190 Secular, 16, 81, 118, 119, 140 et seq., 145,

147; lo), 1523 154

192 Ranuccio, Cardinal (1530-1565), 164 Vittoria, Duchess of Urbino (1519-1602), 137

Ferprinanp, King of Hungary (1503-1564), 115

Ferrante, King of Naples (1497-1502), 161 Festa, Constanzo (1490-1545), 20

Cosway, Maria, 96

Ficiovannt Giovanbattista (d. 1544), 22

Richard (1740-1821), 96 Cortron, M Aylwin, 144

Fornarina, La, mistress of Raphael, 94 Fraconarp, Jean Honoré (1737-1806), 1

Counterfeits and Copies, 48 et seq.

Francesco, Duke of Modena (1629-1658), 50

Covos, see Cosos

Franciortt, Galleotto dell Rovere, Cardinal

Council of Constance (1414-1418), 103 ‘Critic’s Gradual’, The, 149, 201

(d. 1508), 116 Francis I, King of France (1515-1547), 135,

158, 159

Dantete da Volterra, see RIccIARELLI Day, Alexander (1792-1841), 111

Dexouces, Philippe, see VERDELOT Dint, Cuio (d. 1527), 56 Doct, Carlo (1616-1686), 47 Dosst, Dosso (c.1479-1541), 142, 146, 147, 148 Doviz1, Bernardo da Bibbiena, Cardinal

(1470-1520), 159

Garsert, Mercedes, 32 Garpano, Antonio (fl. 1575), 19, 21 Gurr.anpalo, Domenico (1449-1494), 45

Ridolfo (1483-1561), 22, 45 GiAMBULLARI, Piero Francesco (1495-1555), 19,

20 Grorcione, Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco

(c. 1477-1510), 2, 5 et seg. 32, 48 et seq.. 202

Exeanorapi Totepo, Duchess of Tuscany

(1522-1562), 102

Girotamo pa Carpet (c.1501—1556) 112 et seq., 119 et seq. 139, 140, 142, 146, 149, 204

Engravers, 38

Giorro (1267-1337), 1

Este, p’, Alfonso I, Duke of Ferrara

Grutta Ferrarese (Campo?) (d. ¢.1552), 101,

(1505-1534), 26, 32, 140 Ercole I, Duke of Ferrara (1471-1505), 24-26

105 Giuto Romano, Pippi (1499-1556), 146, 166

Ercole II, Duke of Ferrara (1534-1559), 139,

Gonzaca, Anna Caterina, wife of Archduke

140 Isabella, Marchioness of Mantua (1475-1539),

8, 102, 141

214

Ferdinand von Tirol, 137

Ercole, Cardinal (1505-1563), 133, 134 Ferrante (1507-1557), 161

Index Giulia, Duchess of Traetto, Countess of Fondi

(1513-1566), 97, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137-170 passim

Luciani, Sebastiano, see SEBASTIANO DEL PromBo

Lutuer, Martin (1483-1546), 28, 39

Luigi, called Rodomante (1500-1532), 143 Scipione, Cardinal (1543-1593), 161

Vespasiano, Duke of Sabbioneta (1531-1591), 143 Grecory XIII (Boncompagno) (1572-1585), 95 Gucct, Francesco (fl. 1537), 159

Guicrarpint, Silvestro (fl. 1542), 102

Mapruzzo, Christoforo, Cardinal (1512-1578), 135 Maeno, Marcantonio (fl. 1500), 133

ManeELtt, Piero (fl. 1545), 103 Marte.ut, Niccold (fl. 1498-1555), 22 Marrema Non VuoLe (/Z. 1523), 100 May, Gilles de, 17

Menicr, De’ Alessandro, Duke of Florence Haprietp, William (fl. 1775), 96

(1532-1537), 19

Harman, Jeremiah (d. 1844), 169

Antonia Touai (Sirigatti), 46

Haypon, Benjamin Robert (1786-1846), 169 Henry II, King of France (1547-1559), 158, 159

Caterina, Queen of France (1519-1589), 117

Imperra (1481-1512), 100

Innocent VIII (Cibo) (1484-1492), 24

Isaac, Hemrich (1445-1517), 19 IsaBELLA (DEL BALZO) D’ARAGONA, Queen of Naples

(1465-1533), 141

Josquin pes Pres (1440-1521), 20

Cosimo I, Grand Duke of Tuscany

1537-1574), 19 Cosimo III, Grand Duke of Tuscany 1670-1723), 28 Ferdinand I, Grand Duke of Tuscany 1587-1609), 95 Ferdinand II, Grand Duke of Tuscany 1620-1670), 40 Francesco I, Grand Duke of Tuscany (1574-1587), 95, 96 Giovanni, see Lro X Giovanni Carlo, Cardinal (1611-1663), 42, 43

Giulio see CLement VII

Kuatr-ep-Din (Barbarossa) (d. 1546), 134, 142

Ippolito, Cardinal (1509-1535), 19, 97, 103 et seq., 112 et seq., 118, 119, 133 et seq..,

Lascinio, Carlo (1757-1839), 38

163, 189 Leopoldo, Cardinal (1616-1675), 42, 43, 103 Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449-1492), 19

Laurentt, Cornelio (fl. 1484), 26

MicHeLANGELO Buonarroti (1475-1564), 56, 60,

Lancret, Nicolas (1690-1743), 1

LeoX (Medici) (1513-1521) 100, 190 Leonarpo (sellaio) (fl. 1520), 55 Leonarpo pa Vincr, (1452-1519), 48 Leon1, Leone (1509-1590), 143 Lisarr, Pietro (1617-1689), 51 Licinto, Bernardino (c.1491—c. 1549), 34

61, 65, 66 Micuet, Marcantonio (1484-1552), 6

Moperna, Jacques (fl. 1532), 19 Mo1za, Francesco Maria (1489-1544), 134, 143, 151 Monratro, Felice Peretti, Cardinal, see Sixtus V

Lotro, Lorenzo (1480-c. 1556), 32

Monticatino, Antonio (fl. 1484), 26

Louts XII, King of France (1498-1515), 140

Moretro, Alessandro Bonvicino da Brescia

Lucco, Mario, 204

(c.1498-1554), 103, 104

216

Index Morto pa Fetrre, Lorenzo Luzzi (1467-1527),

Piombatore, Office of, 117

2s Mosengau, Jacques (fl. 1800), 167 et seq

Pisco Montano, Terracina, 144

Musical Instruments, 35, 36

Pius III (Piccolomini) (1503),117

Mutroni, Pietro, see PietRO DELLA VECCHIA

Pius V (Ghislieri) (1565-1572), 95, 135

Pisetzky, Rosita Levi, 21, 31, 32

Plague, The, 41, 78 Porpenone, Giovanni Antonio (c. 1483-1539),

Naporeon Bonaparte (1769-1821), 28 Necront, Cianfrancesco, Cardinal (1631-1713),

95 Nreuwenuuts, C. J. (fl. 1844), 169

50 Porrini, Gandolfo (fl. 1532), 155 et seq. Porta, Giacomo della (1537-1602), 185 Putco, Domenico (1492-1527), 187

Nosiut, Giulio d’, 49 Norcuiatt, Giovanni (fl. 1550), 22 Radnor Collection, The, 97, 136 Rapuae., Raffaello Santi da Urbino

Osrecut, Jacob (1453-1505), 23-27 et seq. Ocurno, Bernardino (1487-1564), 100

Orsint, Fulvio (1538-1600), 136, 164, 165, 204

(1483-1520), 55, 57, 61, 96, 121, 150 Ren£e De France, Duchess of Ferrara

(1510-1575), 139, 140, 149 Rentert, Niccolo (1590-1667), 50 et seq. Ricasout, Pietro (fl. 1640), 20

Pama Veccuio, Jacomo Negretti (d. 1528), 34,

Ricuarpson, Jonathon (1665-1745), 111

50 Papal Bulls, procedure of issue, 113 et seq. Paris pe Grassis (1470-1528), 100

Riwotrt, Carlo (1593-1658), 52 Rosertt, Ercole dei (d. 1496), 34

Parmicianino, Francesco Mazzola (1503-1540),

Rovere, Guidobaldo della (1514-1575), 137

37, 139, 146, 178 Passarint, Silvio, Cardinal (1459-1529), 19 Passicnano, Domenico (1560-1636), 41 Paut II (Farnese) (1534-1549), 164, 165, 188, 189 et seq. Paut V (Borghese) (1605-1621), 165 Pepro pi Toxepo (fl. 1545), 102 Penevopre, daughter of Tullia d’Aragona (1535-c.1549), 101, 102 Peruzzi, Baldassare (1481-1537), 57 et seq.

Ruyssroek, Johannes (1293-1381), 27

Perrucct, Ottaviano (1466-1530), 26, 29

S. Srerano, Military Order of, +6

Puiu I, The Fair, King of Castile (1469-1506),

SANGALLO, Francesco da (1494-1576), 45

31 Puiu IV, King of Spain (1621-1665), 65 Pups, Henry (fl. 1812), 167 Pietro pa Fossts (d. 1527), 17 Pretro betta Veccuta (Muttoni) (1603-1680), 7, 49 et seq.

Sarp1, Gaspard (fl. 1505), 26 Sarto, Andrea del (1486-1530), 181 Sasso, Giovanni (fl. 1800), 39

216

Rosst, G. (Rubeis II) (1682-1762), 38

Repic pe Campos, D., 204

Sack of Rome 1527, 19, 101 S. Acostino, Rome, 99

S. Donatien, Bruges, 23, 25

S. Giovanni (The Baptistry) Florence, 18, 19 S. Lorenzo in Damaso, Rome, 115 S. Marra Macciore, Rome, 95

Schonberg House, Pall Mall, London, 96 Scraro, Antonio, 52

Carlo (d. 1651), 51, 52

Index Scorro, Girolamo (fl. 1535), 19, 21

Totomet, Claudio (1492-1555), 69

SEBASTIANO DEL Piomso, Luciani, Viniziano

Torret, Jean, 17

(c.1485—-1547) 15 et seq., 28, 46 et seq.,

Trisoto, Niccolo dei Pericoli (1500-1550), 22

59, 60 et seq., 97, 98, 102, 112 et seq.,

TULLIA D’ARAGONA, see ARAGONA

118 et seq., 149 et seq., 160 et seq. SersencceR, Jacob (1515-1567), 63 Sera, Cosimo del (1579-1658), 40, 203 Paolo del (1614-1672), 40 et seq., 203

Unico Aretino, see ACCOLTI

Serracuio, Giovanni (fl. 1515), 18

Srortza, Guido, Cardinal (1518-1564), 189 Singers, 28

Sreicatti, Ranuccio (1587-1647), 46 Ridolfi (1549-1608), 45 et seq.

Vatpés Juan d’ (Giovanni) (1500-1544), 134,

136, 143 Vanioo, Charles (1705-1765), 1

Sixtus V (Peretti) (1585-1590), 95, 96

Varcut, Benedetto (1503-1565), 102

Skeapinc, Kenneth, 37

VaupreuiL, Comte de (1740-1817), 168

Soccopato, Benedetto, 144, 145

Ve.esquez, Diego (1599-1660), 65

Sopoma, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi (1477-1549),

Verve or, Philippe Delouges (c.1488—c.1550),

146, 147 Sorrentino, Antonio, 132

Sousise Mme. (fl. 1530), 141

15, 16 et seq., 203

Verxruys, Teodoro (Ver Cruys, della Croce)

(d. 1739), 38

Sperone d’Oro, Order of, 49

Verrort, Francesco (1470-1538), 99

Speront, Sperone (1500-1588), 106

Vice Chancellor, Induction of, 115, 116

Sprinecut, Maddelena, 46

Vuintain, C. R. Le, (1740-1836), 38

Spinetti, Giovanni (fl. 1500), 35

Villa Farnesina, Rome, 57 et seq.

Sourss, Mr. (fl. 1800), 167, 169

Villa Montalto (later, Negroni, afterwards,

SraBeLLino, Battista (fl. 1537), 102, 141

Massimo), 95

Srevorio, Francesco, 35

Sr6uzeL, F. (1751-1815), 38 Strozzi, Fillipo (1489-1538), 99 Style Criticism, 146 et seq., 150 et seq.,

201 et seq. Suteman, The Magnificent (1520-1566), 134

Sumptuary Laws, 154

Warreau, Antoine (1684-1721), 1 Wipe, Johannes, 204

Wiaert, Adrian (1480-1562), 17, 20, 33

Wiiuam II, King of Holland (1840-1849), 169 Worst ey, Sir Richard (1751-1805), 39

Tasso, Bernardino (1499-1569), 101 TesBa.pt, Caesare, 51

Yellow Veil, obligatory wearing of the, 102, 136

Tine, Tiberio (1586-1638), 41, 53 Trrot, Ferdinand von, Archduke, 137 Titan, Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1487-1576), 5, 10, 11

et seq., 50, 54, 62, 63, 203

ZarettA, Angela (fl. 1532), 119 Zampezzo, Gianbattista (1627-1700), 51

217

Index

Index of Works of Art Works referred to in the text are listed by title and place. The names of artists are not included owing to the problems of attribution, but when a work listed is not a painting the medium is noted. For ease of reference the Index is divided into three categories: Portraits, Religious Subjects and Secular Subjects. When a work is illustrated the number is given in square brackets.

PORTRAITS AND ALLEGED PORTRAITS Andrea Doria, Palazzo Doria, Rome, 66 [39|

Portrait of a Lady, Kunsthistorisches Museum,

Anton Francesco degli Albizzt, Kress Collection,

Vienna, 137 [58] Portrait of a Lady, Stadelsches Kunstinstitut. Frankfurt, 139 et seq. [63]

Houston, 56, 65

Baccio Valori, Palazzo Pitti, Florence, 66, 158,

160 [38] Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (as a young man) Capodimonte, Naples, 192 (in later life) (medal), British Museum, London

[83] Clement VII, Capodimonte, Naples, 154, 158,

160, 164 (76, 78] Pinacoteca, Parma, 185 et seq. [75] Female Head (roundel), Private Collection, England, 104 [41] Ferry Carondolet, Cardinal, and his Secretaries, Thyssen Bornemisza Coll., Lugano, 61

[30] Georges d’Armagnac, Bishop of Rodez and his Secretary, 61 [31] Guorgione, Self-portrait, Anton Ulrich Museum,

Brunswick, 7 [8] Giulia Gonzaga, Lady as S. Agatha, National

Gallery, London, 135 [54] Portrait of a Lady, Radnor Coll. Longford Castle, 97, 136 [40] Portrait of a Lady, Palazzo Reale, Caserta, 137

(57]

Portrait of a Lady, Martius Coll. Kiel, 137 [55] Portrait of a Lady, formerly Borghese Coll, Rome 137 [59}

218

Bust Portrait, marble relief, whereabouts

unknown, 143 [64] Ippolito de’ Medici and an Official, National Gallery, London, 111 e¢ seg. [43] Ippolito de’ Medici in Hungarian Dress, Palazzo Pitti, Florence, 120 [53] Jeanne d’Aragon, Louvre, Paris, 159, 165

Josephine, Empress of France, Museé de Versailles, 168 [74] La Fornarina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence, 154 [73] Laura, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 7, 8

[9] Luigi Gonzaga (engraving in reverse), British Museum, London, 143 [66] Mona Lisa, Louvre, Paris, 155

Paul III, Capodimonte, Naples, 193, 204 [77] Pinacoteca, Parma, 188 e¢ seq. [75] British Museum, London (Medal) 193 [81] Pietro Aretino, Palazzo Pitti, Florence, 63, 193

[33] Rauuccio Farnese, 193 [32] Reginald Pole, the Hermitage, Leningrad, 193 Renée de France, Drawing, Musée Condé, Chantilly, 140 [68] Renée de France, Musée de Versaillea, 140 [69] Renée de France, British Library, London [70]

Index Surigatti Cassandra

Tullia d’Aragona, Pinacoteca, Brescia, 104 [42]

Niccolo (Marble Busts), Victoria & Albert

Vespasiano Gonzaga, Chiesa dell’ Incoronata,

Sabbioneta, 143 [67]

Museum, London, 45 [21, 22]

The Concert, Palazzo Pitti, Florence, 5 et seq. [11, 25, 26, 27, 29] Palazzo Doria, Rome (copy) [23) British Museum, London (engraving) [24)

Vittoria Farnese, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest,

137 [60] Young Man, Staatliche Museen, Berlin-Dahlem, 7

[7]

RELIGIOUS SUBJECTS Assumption of the Virgin, Santa Maria dei Frari.

Venice, 62

Sacra Conversazione, Prado, Madrid, 12 [11]

Castelfranco Altarpiece. Duomo, Castelfranco.

T [5]

Sacra Conversazione, Private Collection, New

York, 202

Descent of Christ into Limbo, Prado, 64 [36) Ecce Homo. Kunsthistorisches Museum. Vienna.

64 (36) Holy Family and Donor, National Gallery, London 64, 152 [37) Judith, the Hermitage, Leningrad, 7 [35) Judith, Uffizi. Florence. 46 Manchester

Sacra Conversazione, Louvre, Paris, 12 [10]

S. Antonio e Diacont, SS. Giovanni e Paolo, Venice, 190

SS. Bartolomeo, Sebastiano, Ludovico, Sinibaldo

(formerly S. Bartolomeo) Accademia, Venice, 58

S. Dorothea, Staatliche Museen, Berlin-Dahlem,

154 [72]

Madonna, National Gallery, London,

111

S. Giovanni Crisostomo Altarpiece, Venice, 58 Salome, National Gallery, London, 154 [71]

Pieta (formerly S$. Salvador. Ubeda), Casa de

Taddei Tondo (marble), Royal Academy,

Pilatos, Seville. 161 Raising of Lazarus, National Gallery, London, 64. 66, 150, 152 [34

Transfiguration, Vatican, Rome, 66

Risen Christ (marble). S. Maria sopra Minerva. Rome. 202

London, 202 Trial of Moses and Judgement of Solman, Uffizi,

Florence, 9

SECULAR SUBJECTS A Concert, Hampton Court Palace, 34 [13)

Sunset Landscape, National Gallery, London, 9

A Concert, Hampton Court Palace, 33 [14) A Concert, National Gallery, London, 34 (16)

The Concert, Palazzo Pitti, Florence, 5 et seq.

Death of Actaeon, National Gallery, 62 Female Nude from the Fondaco de’Tedeschi, Accademia, Venice. 6, 8 [1)

Gigantic Head (\unette), Villa Farnesina, Rome, 57 et seq. (28 Reclining Venus, Gemaldgalerie, Dresden, 1 [2] Sacred and Profane Love, Villa Borghese, Rome,

62

passim, 205 [25] The Tempest, Accademia, Venice, 7 [4] The Three Ages of Man, Palazzo Pitti, Florence, 14, 32 [12] The Three Philosophers, Kunsthistorisches

Museum, Vienna, 7 [3] The Three Sisters, National Gallery, London, 34

(15]

Venus and the Organ Player, 62

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