Venice: Frari

At the time Edward Hutton visited S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in the first decade of the twentieth century, Titian's Assunta had been removed and placed in the Accademia. Nevertheless, two of the greatest paintings of the Venetian Renaissance were still in place. Here is his description.* 

Giovanni Bellini: Pesaro Altarpiece

Here, too, stood one of the great treasures of the church, an altarpiece by Giovanni Bellini, painted in 1488, one of the loveliest of his works. It still carries its original Renaissance frame. In the midst is the Blessed virgin, enthroned, with her little Son, standing on her knee. At her feet are two music making angels of pure delight, while on the side panels are four splendid saints on guard—S. Peter, S. Nicholas, S. Paul, and S. Benedict. Nothing that was ever in the church can have been lovelier than this quiet altarpiece. … (134-135)

Titian" Pesaro Atarpiece

 The great and beautiful thing which recalls us to this aisle of the Frari again and again is Titian’s famous Madonna del Pesaro….Under a vast and beautiful Renaissance arch, through which we see a great sky full of snow-white clouds, between two mighty pillars, the Madonna sits enthroned, her little Son standing on her knee laughing with and blessing S. Francis, behind whom is S. Anthony. Bending a little to her right, Madonna holds her child with both hands gently, firmly, and receives the homage of Bishop Jacopo, who is introduced by S. Peter, beyond whom a bearded warrior, leading a Turk and a Moor in chains, uprears the standard of the Borgia. On the right of the picture beneath S. Francis kneel the family of the Bishop, three old men, perhaps his brothers, a youth, and a fair-haired child who gazes sweetly out of the canvas, while above one of those great white clouds has sailed into the great portico across the height of the pillars, and upon it, like children on a toy ship, are two winged angelini bearing the cross. I suppose there is no other work of Titian in Venice which is so consummate a work of art or so wonderfully original a composition as this. Its humanity and quietness, the beauty of its colour too, its inexhaustible perfection are the chief reasons why one continually returns to the Frari. (134-137)

### 

Edward Hutton, Venice and Venetia,  London, third edition, 1929, first published 1911.

* The Assunta is now in its rightful place above the main altar. It had been removed to the Academmia in 1816 but restored to the Frari in 1916. Its 21 panels measuring 690 x 360 cm were restored in 1994.

Venice: Tintoretto's Paradise.

 On his visit to the Doge's palace Edward Hutton saw Tintoretto's Paradise but expressed his disappointment. *

I confess at once that while in the Antecollegio Tintoretto seems to me to be one of the great painters in the world, a true poet and creator of beauty, here I am altogether at a loss. The vast canvas, almost black and altogether without order or arrangement in its composition, means absolutely nothing to me, it moves me not at all, I get from it no pleasure, nor do I understand it…. For others this picture may be, as I gather it was for Ruskin, a profound revelation of beauty and joy. Me it cannot affect. I am, let me confess it, merely confused and tired by its dim ocean of figures… and if this be Heaven I had looked for a happier place and one full of light. Who for a moment would exchange this our dear world for that far ocean of murky gloom? Let us go to the great window and standing there look at the sunlight lying on the city, the dancing waves of the lagoon, the happy morning joyful along the Schiavone, the shady trees of the gardens, the adventurous Fortuna, the cold magnificent Salute, the joy of S. Giorgio of the rosy tower, the life of the ships at the Zattere quays, the ways of the little people in the Piazzeta. Is not this a heaven of heavens in comparison with that solemn  black chaos within doors?—that pretentious and prideful study in anatomy and movement that has no thought at all of anything in the world or above it save the wonderful capacity of Messer Jacopo Tintoretto? Yet he is but typical of them all. After the Bellini Venice neve possessed a religious painter. Not one of them all, even the greatest, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, is anything but a mediocrity beside Angelico, or Gentile da Fabriano, or Sassetta, or half a dozen Sienese I could name. **

###

* I can certainly understand his feelings. Often, I have stood in Museums in Italy and elsewhere and preferred to turn my eyes from the masterpieces on the walls to look our the windows at the scenery. The view from the Uffizi in Florence is one example, as is the view from the Ca' Doro in Venice.

**Edward Hutton, Venice and Venetia,  London, third edition, 1929, first published 1911, p. 82. 

Edward Hutton: Venetian Renaissance

 

Below find Edward Hutton's thoughts on Giorgione and other great painters of the Venetian Renaissance. The painting he refers to as the soldier and the gypsy is usually called The Tempest but I believe its subject is the Rest of the Holy Family on the Flight into Egypt.

For the truth is that Giorgione, Titian, and Tintoretto are each an absolutely new impulse in painting. Fundamentally they owe nothing, accidentally even very little, to their predecessors; and if, as we have said, Titian and Tintoretto were able to find full expression because of the work of Giorgione, it is only in the way that Shakespeare and Milton may be said to owe something… to Spencer;… the work of Giorgione, Titian, and Tintoretto are absolutely new things in the world, the result of a new impulse and a new vision, individual and personal to the last degree, owing little to any school and making little of tradition. (149)

Giorgione: Tempest

For with Giorgione (1478-1510), the pupil of Giovanni Bellini…we have a new creation in Art; he is the first painter of the true “easel picture,” the picture which is neither painted for church nor to adorn a great public hall, but to hang on the wall of a room in a private house for the delight of the owner. For Giorgione the individual exists, and it is for him, for the most part, he works, and thus stands on the threshold of the modern world…. In these short thirty-two years, however, he found time to re-create Venetian painting, to return it to its origins, and to make the career of his great fellow-pupil, Titian, whom he may be said to have formed, possible. ... (160)

 It is almost the same with the Gipsy and the Soldier of Prince Giovanelli, only there, I think, anyone who has ever doubted that Giorgione was born at Castelfranco has his answer, for it is that little towered city beside the Musone that we see in the background, under that gathering storm sweeping down from the hills. (233)

 [Castelfranco] This little city…is the happy possessor of what will ever remain, I suppose, the work that is most certainly his very own—I mean the altarpiece of the Madonna enthroned with her little Son between S. Francis and S. Liberale. This glorious picture…is one of the very few Venetian pictures…which possess that serenity and peace, something in truth spellbound, that is necessary to and helps to make what I may call a religious picture. For something must be added to beauty, something must be added to art, to achieve that end which Perugino seems to have reached so easily, and which almost every Sienese painter knew by instinct how to attain. That quality is serenity, the something spellbound we find here. And Giorgione is the last Venetian master to possess that secret. Is it not the same in music? God forbid that I should claim that Palestrina is a greater master than Mozart, any more than I should claim that Giorgione is greater than Titian. It remains, however, that just as Giorgione, the Sienese and Perugino, to name no others, attained to this effect, while Titian, Tintoretto, Michelangelo, and a host of very great masters  could not, so Palestrina, Byrd, and di Lasso could achieve it, yet Mozart, Beethoven, and the rest never once in all their work--something has gone out of the world of which we are ignorant, only we miss it more and more in looking back on the beauty that was in the hearts of our fathers. (233-234)

### 

*Edward Hutton, Venice and Venetia,  London, third edition, 1929, first published 1911. 

Venice: Giorgione's Tempest

 I first saw Giorgione's Tempest in 2005 in Edward Hutton's book, Venice and Venetia, originally published in 1911. Below is his beautiful and imaginative description of Giorgione's mysterious painting as he saw it in the Palazzo Giovanelli before its acquisition by the Italian state. He was describing the art treasures of the palace. Few can match his descriptive powers but I disagree with him on the subject of this painting. See note below. *

Giorgione: The Tempest
Accademia, Venice 

Undoubtedly the greatest of these is a picture by Georgione, which has passed under various names--the Family of Georgione, or simply the Gipsy and the soldier--and which in itself sums up all that we mean by the Georgionesque in painting. There we see, in a delicious landscape of green and shady valley, of stream and ruin and towered country town, a woman nude but for a cape about her shoulders giving her breast to her child in the shadow of the trees by a quiet stream. On the other side of this jewelled brook a young man like a soldier--or is it a shepherd? --stands resting on a great lance or crook and seems to converse with her. Close by are the ruins of some classical building overgrown by moss and lichen and half hidden in the trees, and not far off up the stream in the sunset we see the towers and walls and roofs and domes of a little town with its bridge across the stream leading to the great old fortified gate of the place. But what chiefly attracts us in the work is something new we find there, an air of golden reality, something dreamlike too, though and wholly of this our world, an air of music which seems to come to us from the noise of the brook or the summer wind in the trees, or the evening bells that from far-off we seem to hear ring Ave Maria. One of the golden moments of life has been caught here for ever and perfectly expressed. Heaven, it seems, the kingdom of Heaven, is really to be found in our midst, and Giorgione has contrived a miracle the direct opposite of that of Angelico; for he found all the flowers of Tuscany and the byways of the world in far off Paradise, but Georgione has found Paradise itself here in our world. And we must remember that such a work as this was the true invention of Georgione. Before him there was nothing but church pictures. It is to him we owe these pieces which have nothing directly to do with religion, that were painted to light up the rooms we live in, to bring the sun, if you will, into a cabinet and all the sunset and the quiet out-of-doors into a rich man's study. Here, in truth, we have humanism and its essence, and for once perfectly understood and expressed. **

###

** Edward Hutton, Venice and Venetia, New York, 1911, p. 121-122.

*Note: Giorgione: La Tempesta. In the fall of 2005 I interpreted the subject of the Tempest as “The Rest on the Flight into Egypt.” In this interpretation all the major elements in the painting are identified. The nude woman nursing an infant is the Madonna. The man standing at the left, functioning as an “interlocutor”. is St. Joseph with his traditional staff. The broken columns are commonplace in depictions of the “Rest on the Flight into Egypt.” The city in the background is Judea from where the Holy Family has fled but could also be equated with Padua during the Cambrai war. The scraggly plant in the foreground is identified as a “belladonna” a plant associated with witchcraft and the Devil. Even the bird on the distant rooftop is shown to be derived from a famous Psalm. A short essay was published in the Masterpiece column of the Wall St. Journal in May, 2006. The full paper can be found on academia.edu.

** Edward Hutton, Venice and Venetia, New York, 1911, p. 121-122.