The Vendramin Inventory and Giorgione: A Note of Caution

Author(s): Cecil Gould

Source: The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 121, No. 921 (Dec., 1979), p. 801
Published by: Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/879776
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 SHORTER
breakthrough from St Peter's to the Tiber was recommended
with the idea of reinstating the ancient Via Triumphalis as far
as the Capitol. 4
If the Ponte Sant'Angelo and the Piazza S.Pietro are to be
considered 'Christian reconstructions' of antique structures, a
subsequent idea comes to mind, namely, that all Bernini's work
for Popes Alexander VII and Clement X in this part of Rome is
a reconstruction of the Ager Vaticanus,35 especially if we
consider that Bernini also planned the opening of an axis
between the Tiber and St Peter's.36 The Neronian Circus,
being the site of St Peter's martyrdom, becomes through
Bernini's colonnades a gesture on the part of the Church
which, to cite Bernini, opens in this way her motherly arms to
mankind. " This symbolism lives on to this day and came lately
to life in a representation, perhaps in questionable taste, of the
Piazza on a post-card during Holy Year, 1975 (Fig.35). On the
Ponte Sant'Angelo the Victoriae of antiquity are formally
transformed into angels who, in carrying the Arma Christi, are
supposed to bring the beholder to meditate on Christ's passion.
The proposed road to the Tiber would have become a partial
realisation of the Via Triumphalis.
Interpretations of the Piazza S.Pietro and of Bernini's later
works thus acquire a new dimension and this short paper
should be seen as an attempt to point towards a new direction,
which might eventually prove to be worthwhile.
3' See also LUIGISALERNOet al.: Via Giulia. Una utopia urbanistica del 500.
Rome [1973]; CHRISTOPHLUITPOLDFROMMEL: Der romische Palastbau der
Hochrenaissance, Vol.I, Tiibingen [1973], p.12 f.
" This
interpretation was advanced for the first time in a lecture of mine
which up to now has been published only in a newspaper. See HANNO-WALTER
KRUFT:'Symbolik in der Architektur Berninis', Neue Ziircher Zeitung, [11th
June 1972].
36 See above all TIMOTHYKAORIKITAO:'The Borgo, the Square of St Peter's and
Bernini's art of compromise',Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
28 [1969], p.217.
37 BRAUER-WITTKOWER, op.cit. [1931], p.70 note 1. This cosmic interpretation
of St Peter's becomes specially apparent in the counter-projects (WITTKOWER,
op.cit., [1939-40; 1975], Fig.85 ff.).
A few years ago, after seeing a fayence in the Benaki-Museum in Athens
representing the Holy Mosque in Mecca in such a manner that the Ka'aba
stands within a circular court which itself merges into a trapeze (Fig.36) - a
solution which as a ground plan is comparable to the Piazza - I thought of the
possibility of seeing in the Roman project a discreet allusion to the main shrine
of Mohammedanism. Essentially the present layout of the Mosque goes back to
a commission on the part of Suleyman I (1520-66), who put the architect Sinan
in charge of the planning, and whose plans were used later on by Mehmet
Agha. Pictorial representations of the Holy Mosque in this form are common,
so it is possible that a knowledge of it eventually reached the West (see A. J.
WENSINCK: 'Ka'aba', Encyclopgdie de lIslam, III [1927], p.622 ff.; EMELESIN:
Mekka und Medina, Frankfurt [1963], p.179, Fig.101 representing a very
similar fayence dated 1666; DIETRICHBRANDENBURG: Die Baumeister des Pro-
pheten, Ziirich and Freiburg [1971], p.17 ff. with ill.). As long as no historical
evidence is found to support such a connection, a hypothesis of this kind should
be handled with the greatest caution. Nevertheless, I did not want to suppress it
completely.
Letters
Piero's 'Flagellation'
SIR, Professor Ludovico Borgo is to be congratulated for mak-
ing important contributions to the continuing study of Piero
della Francesca's Flagellation of Christ. In his recent article
('New Questions for Piero's "Flagellation",' THE BURLINGTON
CXX [1979], pp.547-53), Borgo effectively
MAGAZINE,
demonstrates that the tower in Piero's setting, as well as in
scenes of the same subject by, for example, Pietro Lorenzetti
and Jacopo Bellini, depend on the descriptions of Flavius
Josephus in hisJewish Wars, Book V, an early medieval source
well-known in the fifteenth century. It might be added that a
copy of this work was in Federico da Montefeltro's library, now
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NOTICES
in the Vatican (Codex Urbinas Gr. 84, XIth century; Codices
Urbinates Graeci Bibliothecae Vaticanae, ed. Cosimo Storna-
jolo, Rome [1895], p.130). Also valuable is Borgo's introduc-
tion into the discussion of sources for Piero's asymmetrical com-
position of a detached fresco by a member of Lippo Fioren-
tino's circle, Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence, c. 1402. Less
impressive is Borgo's main thesis: that the three foreground
figures represent characters from a Jewish apocryphal version
of the Trial of Jesus, in which a Jewish High Priest, an Elder,
and a third man known as the 'gardener,' engage in negotia-
tions with Pontius Pilate outside the Praetorium. Although this
argument has attractive aspects, it presents major difficulties.
First, as Borgo himself admits, there is no evidence that the
story was known in fifteenth-century Italy. Second, the costume
style of the bearded foreground figure fails to prove he
represents a Jewish High Priest. Borgo is not the first to point
out the sartorial relationship of this figure to figures in the mid-
dle ground of Piero's Baptism and in Filarete's narrative reliefs
on the bronze doors of St Peter's. Among others, Marie Tanner
('Concordia in Piero della Francesca's "Baptism of Christ",' Art
Quarterly, XXXV [1972], pp.1-21) already did so, and she
showed, moreover, that the Baptism figures are not Jewish
priests but epiphanical Magi. (Further to this point, see my
forthcoming monograph on Piero's Baptism, chap.IV.) Third
and more serious, it scarcely seems possible that figures conver-
sing entirely amongst themselves could refer to characters
whose whole significance lies in their direct interchange with
Pilate. Like other commentators on the Flagellation since my
1968 publication, Borgo ignores the unnatural reversal in the
direction of the flow of light in the Praetorium which, to my
mind, marks the Flagellation group as a miraculous appari-
tion. This differentiation in light-flow, long covered by grime
and old varnish, was revealed when the painting was first clean-
ed in 1951-52, and became still more evident after the second
restoration campaign in 1968-69. Yet Borgo reproduces
photographs of the painting taken before World War II in
which the effect does not show. Since THE BURLINGTON
MAGAZINE used a post-cleaning transparency for the colour
detail of the foreground figures on the cover of the issue, it is all
the more strange that Professor Borgo was allowed this kind of
unprofessionalismin his article.
MARILYN ARONBERG LAVIN
The Vendramin Inventory and
Giorgione. A Note of Caution
SIR, Jaynie Anderson is to be congratulated on the publication
of the 1601 Gabriel Vendramin inventory (THE BURLINGTON
MAGAZINE [October 1979]), and no lack of appreciation should
be inferred if I suggest a note of caution concerning one of her
assumptions. It arises from item XIII in the inventory: un
quadretto con un'homo armato con la lanza in spalla. Jaynie
Anderson identifies this without reservation with No.269 of the
National Gallery. As painters' names are not specified in the in-
ventory, and, more serious still, as there is in this case no con-
tinuity of provenance (the National Gallery picture's ownership
is uncertain before the nineteenth century, which would leave
an enormous gap) it would have to be assumed that there was
only one picture, of the dimensions specified, representing an
armed man with a lance over his shoulder in existence in the
sixteenth century. The fact that the collection to which the in-
ventory refers was located in Venice still does no more than
make the tie-up a reasonable possibility, repeat possibility. Yet
if this is not pointed out the next student who treats of the sub-
ject will infallibly write 'As Jaynie Anderson has shown . . .', or
'demonstrated . . .', or even 'proved . . .', when what she has
in fact done stops well short of that.
CECIL GOULD
801