GIORGIONE, GIORGIO da CASTELFRANCO, known as il. – Painter, b. at Castelfranco Veneto probably in 1477 or 1478, d. at Venice shortly before 25 Oct. 1510; one of the greatest artists of humanity. He is the first free interpreter of nature; his creations are the fruit of a lyrical sentiment that underlies modern art.
Nothing is known with certainty about his birth and early years, and only with difficulty can some data about his life be reconstructed. That G. was born of very humble stock, as Vasari affirms, seems very probable. Ridolfi (1648) says that his name was Barbarella; but this is the name of the family that perhaps adopted him. He was probably a foundling, and his predilection for the myth of Paris seems to confirm this. In contemporary documents he is called Zorzi or Zorzo da Castelfranco; Zorzon or G. is a term that appears after his death, and for the first time written in Il Pino (1548).
As to G.’s artistic education, Vasari’s accounts are contradictory, for in the first edition of his Lives he states that G. was placed in the school of Gentile and Giovanni Bellini; whereas in the second (which is the more reliable, having received information about G. from Titian’s own lips) he makes no mention of that teaching, merely asserting that G. far surpassed the Bellinis. It is known, from the inscription on the back of the painting of Laura in the Vienna Museum, that in 1506 he was “collega” of Vincenzo Catenale and was called “maestro”; that in 1507 he received the coveted commission for a canvas to be placed in the hall of the Council of Ten in the Ducal Palace; and that by 1508, when he was entrusted with the frescoes of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi on the Grand Canal (while the less important walls, facing the Mercerie, were commissioned to Titian), he had already attained great fame. Unfortunately, the canvas for the Ducal Palace has been lost, and of the Fondaco frescoes only a faint trace of a female figure remains, transferred to the Accademia Gallery a few years ago (an iconographic memory of those paintings exists in the engravings of Zanetti, 1760).
Vasari’s information on G.’s life and works is scanty and not entirely reliable. He recalls him through tradition, especially that of Titian, as “gentle and musical, and he played the lute so wonderfully that he often sang and played at various musical gatherings and noble assemblies”: these hints also clarify the “musicality” of G.’s painting. For reconstructing G.’s activity, in addition to Vasari, the Venetian nobleman Marcantonio Michiel is helpful; he noted in private houses in Venice and Padua, from 1525 to 1543, various paintings and drawings by the master, which constitute the principal sources for knowledge of his art. The chronology of G.’s works can only be approximated.
Among his earliest works are generally recognized the panels in the Uffizi with the Trial by Fire and the Judgment of Solomon; but these are not entirely autograph, having been executed in collaboration with another, now unknown, master. At the beginning of his career are also to be assigned the two small panels in the Civic Museum of Padua, one of Leda with the Swan, the other of a Pastoral Idyll; to these should be added, as an integral part of a complex later dismembered, a third small panel depicting an Old Man with an Hourglass, formerly in the Pulszky collection in Budapest, now in America. Among the earliest works of G. should also be considered the fresco frieze in the Pellizzari house in Castelfranco, composed of musical instruments, astronomical symbols, and representations of the liberal arts and of
of Berlin, which in turn embodies an ideal of Renaissance beauty; the portrait of the Old Woman “with Time” in the Accademia of Venice, on the contrary, of a surprising realism inspired by northern models, a work once attributed to Torbido, and, to tell the truth, still unjustly controversial; as is, unfortunately, still debated the suggestive panel of The Three Ages in the Pitti Gallery in Florence. To these are added the universally celebrated works, namely the aforementioned fragment of fresco from the Fondaco dei Tedeschi (1508) and The Tempest, both in the Venetian Accademia, as well as The Three Philosophers in the Museum of Vienna. The Tempest is the work that best of any other by G. expresses, for the first time in the history of art, that panicked feeling for nature, that living and throbbing of man in unison with creation, that “revolution” of the spirit by which he is part of the cosmos and subject to its supreme laws. The descriptive, “optical” landscape of the Flemings and northerners is surpassed in a sublimely poetic transfiguration: so poetic that the figurative subject (probably relating to the myth of the infant Paris) fades into the background, and even Michiel does not know it exactly but cites it only as “the little landscape with the storm, with the gypsy and the soldier.” The “subject” is even more mysterious when one considers that in the first version of the work G. had painted, in place of the “soldier,” a figure of a seated Jewish woman at the edge of the stream, dipping her feet in the water, as has been recently revealed by the X-ray examination of the painting.
Equally enigmatic is the “subject” of The Three Philosophers, also interpreted as Three Mathematicians or Three Astronomers or the Three Magi, or referred to Roman mythology and even to the occultism of secret societies; but which most likely represents the three ages of philosophy, embodied in antiquity by Aristotle, in the Middle Ages by Averroes, and in the Renaissance by the young observer and measurer, follower of the new ideas of naturalism then taught at the Studio of Padua. The philosophical theme (or whatever it may be, mythological or otherwise) has been transformed into pure lyricism, into a musical contemplation; and the painting is of such profound chromatic intensity that it has no equal except in a few works by G. himself. According to Michiel, the painting was finished by Sebastiano del Piombo; but it is certain that his intervention was limited to a few non-essential parts.
A painting that is gaining universal recognition by critics is the Adoration of the Shepherds, formerly in the Allendale collection in London, now in the National Gallery in Washington; a painting among the most important of G., in which the highest pictorial qualities of the master are wonderfully summarized and synthesized. It is certainly to be identified with that “Night” which Isabella d’Este wished, but in vain, to acquire immediately after G.’s death. A masterpiece of the master’s final years, it is particularly enchanting for its atmospheric interpretation of light, which anticipates the achievements of Vermeer. Critical judgment is also becoming unanimous on other little-known works, such as Eros with the Arrow in the Museum of Vienna; the Self-Portrait in the Guise of David in the Brunswick Gallery, which is unfortunately only a very deteriorated and restored fragment; and the Portrait of a Gentleman, formerly in the Terris collection in London, now in the Museum of San Diego in California, bearing on the back a contemporary inscription stating it to be “by the hand of m. Zorzi de Castel fr...” with the date (not entirely clear) of 1508. The great similarity of this work to the aforementioned self-portrait in Brunswick makes it probable that in this admirable head, with its diffused luminosity and compact, thick chromatic paste, G. depicted himself.
BIBL.:
Vasari, Le vite..., ed. Milanesi, V, Firenze 1878-85, pp. 573-581;
Ridolfi, Le maraviglie..., Venezia 1648, pp. 1-12;
Michiel, Notizie..., ed. Ludwig, München 1892;
Crowe e Cavalcaselle, Storia..., ed. Berenson, III, Firenze 1908, pp. 1-100;
Venturi, Storia..., III, 2, Milano 1908, pp. 621-700;
Baron, Giorgione’s Ambiguity, in “Art Bulletin”, 1937, pp. 123-142;
Fiocco, Giorgione, Milano 1941;
Pallucchini, La giovinezza di Giorgione, in “Bollettino d’arte”, 1942, pp. 1-12.
To clarify GIOVANNI’s “painterly world” there remain also several copies of his paintings made by David Teniers the Younger, such as The Discovery of Paris in the Loeser collection in Florence, The Assault in the Gronau collection, also in Florence, and the half-length figure of Nero in the collection of Professor Suida in New York. Other interesting copies from lost originals by GIOVANNI include The Horoscope in the Dresden Gallery, The Shepherd with a Flute at Hampton Court, and David with the Head of Goliath in the Vienna Museum.
In the sphere of dubious works remains the much-debated Judgement of Solomon from the Bankes collection at Kingston Lacy in England, perhaps only begun by GIOVANNI and completed by Sebastiano del Piombo, while other celebrated creations—such as the Pastoral Concert in the Louvre, the Concert in the Pitti Palace, The Adulteress in the Glasgow Museum, and the Madonna with Saints Roch and Anthony in the Prado—are now beyond doubt to be restored to the genius of the young TIZIANO. As for the celebrated Dresden Venus, now in the possession of the U.S.S.R., it is commonly held that the painting was begun by GIOVANNI and finished by TITIAN, assuming it to be the same work noted by Marcantonio Michiel in 1525 in the house of Girolamo Marcello in Venice; yet the identification with that work is highly questionable, whereas the lavish painting style, the monumental composition, the chromatic scheme, and every formal element speak solely in favour of TITIAN, towards whom, moreover, criticism has decisively inclined.
Of the many drawings attributed to GIOVANNI only one is unanimously accepted as autograph: the Young Shepherd, with a view of the walls of Castelfranco in the background, in the Boymans Museum in Rotterdam; yet the Violinist in the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris is certainly also by his hand. These are drawings of exquisite refinement, conceived in a properly “painterly” sense.
GIOVANNI’s artistic development departs from the still Quattrocento concepts of the Bellini and Carpaccio, soon distancing himself in the search for a new painterly world. According to Vasari, the revelation of this new world came to him through Leonardo’s sfumato; an hypothesis that contains a measure of truth when one considers the genuine affinity of intent between Leonardo’s “spatial and atmospheric depth,” achieved through chiaroscuro, and GIOVANNI’s tonal harmony, likewise conceived as atmospheric fusion but attained exclusively through colour. From his earliest secure works GIOVANNI rises above the distinction between form and colour, for in his vision it is colour that gives form to things. Hence he soon abandoned, as Vasari rightly but exaggeratedly remarks, “the dry, crude, and laborious manner of the Bellini” and set to work “without drawing, firmly convinced that painting solely with colours, without any preliminary study of drawing on paper, was the true and best way to proceed.” Thus GIOVANNI passed from Leonardo’s sfumato to a painting of touch, itself a consequence of tonal painting. It is precisely to the final phase of GIOVANNI’s evolution that Vasari’s remarks must therefore be referred, remarks that nonetheless capture so vividly the novelty of Giorgionesque painting.
Naturally, the premises for this painting were already in the air in Venice: both in the creations of the elder Giambellino, where a sweet chromatic fusion is evident, and in the fairly numerous examples of Flemish painting. The young man from Castelfranco initially underwent marked influence from Nordic Gothicism, and the cascading drapery in the Judith in Leningrad, the former Benson Holy Family, and the Castelfranco Madonna—unparalleled in contemporary Venetian painting—bear clear witness to this. The engravings of Schongauer, Wohlgemut, and the Little Masters; the works of Dürer; and the Witches of Hieronymus Bosch in the Ducal Palace certainly helped to lift GIOVANNI’s imagination towards realms hitherto mysterious (he felt only slight iconographic influence from ANTONELLO, in the framing of certain portraits; in reality GIOVANNI worked in antithesis to the rigorous plastic conclusiveness of the Sicilian, painting through soft transitions of light). Alongside these influences, the classical studies environment, frequent contact with the world of learning, and the interplay with musicality and, in short, with all that fermenting spiritual life—permeated by an almost arcane euphoria—characteristic of Venice in the first decade of the sixteenth century weighed heavily in GIOVANNI’s formation. From these premises arose the lofty ethos of beauty that permeates GIOVANNI’s creatures.
To achieve the perfect fusion of his colours, GIOVANNI employed a painting technique of glazes, already in use in Venetian painting but which he developed further, investing it with capital importance. The exegesis of GIOVANNI’s art, however, cannot be exhausted in the diagnosis of form; it demands a spiritual abandonment to its pure poetic values, without which his supremely mysterious and ineffable pictorial personality would remain a dead letter.
GIOVANNI is not a myth, as some have claimed. Besides the aforementioned contemporary documents, he is mentioned in the Diarii of Marin Sanudo, who recorded his death. Yet the most “living” documents concerning GIOVANNI’s works are the letters that Isabella d’Este exchanged, immediately after the artist’s death, with her procurator in Venice, Taddeo Albano, to secure a record of the great painter prematurely taken from the world. Albano replied on 7 November that of the “Nights” (i.e., Adoration of the Shepherds) painted by GIOVANNI one was in the possession of Taddeo Contarini and another, of finer execution, with Vittore Beccaro; yet neither was willing to sell them “for any price, because they had them made to enjoy them themselves”—a telling example of the love that patrons bore for the Master’s works, whose greatness was fully recognized even by his contemporaries. — See pl. XXXIV.