Giorgione's self portrait as David is lost in the original but known through copies. This article suggests an intellectual and artistic context, in which it might have been read in terms of the paragone between the arts. Taken from Poetry on Art: Renaissance to Romanticism, ed. Thomas Frangenberg Donnington, 2003.

Giorgione's self-portrait p.1

The grandiloquent title of this paper is designed to recall, first and obviously, Simonides's 'painting is mute poetry; poetry is vocal painting';[1] secondly, more obliquely, a phrase from the Codex Urbinas, in which Leonardo, polemically contrasting painting to the other arts, pits it in particular against poetry:

Ma per non sapere li suoi operatori dire la sua ragione, [la pittura] 'e restata longo tempo sanza advocati, perché essa non parla, ma per sé si dimostra e termina ne' fatti; e la poesia finisce in parole, co le quali come briosa sé stessa lauda.

But because its practitioners do not know how to state its case, painting has remained a long time without advocates, because painting does not speak, but shows itself through itself and goes no further than the facts; but poetry's end is words, with which, and vigorously, it praises itself.'

That 'per sé si dimostra, e termina ne' fatti' rings down to the present, for in the absence of 'parole' the interpretation we choose to place upon Renaissance paintings has as its only evidence the paintings themselves, uncorroborated; and even when we give them their lines to speak, obdurately mute is what the paintings themselves remain. The interpretation I wish to put upon a certain painting by Giorgione is more than can be proved, and perhaps more than may be found likely, despite some circumstantial evidence to assist it. It may even not be accepted that the work is so anomalous as to demand an interpretation. However, Leonardo's remark may support the idea that the work might have been painted deliberately in order to 'rival' poetry and the intention, not being sympathetic to later viewers, might subsequently have been lost - or obscured, for Giorgione's interest in the paragone between the arts is a fact of the sources, and has been accepted and further investigated by current scholarship.'

FOOTNOTES

1 As from Plutarch, De Gloria Atheniensium, HI, 346f-47c.

2 Codex Urbinas 1270, fol. 28v; Leonardo da Vinci, The Literary Works, J. P. and I. A. Richter (Eds), 3rd edition, London 1970, item 20.

3 For Giorgione and the paragone, see most recently G. Helke, 'Giorgione als Maler des Paragone', Jahrbuch des Kiinstbistorischen Museums Wien, N.F. 1, 1999, pp. 11-79 (published after this article was written).

Giorgione's self-portrait p.2

In some ways this is a diversion from the central theme of this collection of papers, which is rather poetry about art than art 'about' poetry. However, Glorgione's 'demonstrations' [4] believe dimostrazione is a term that might appropriately have been applied at the time to these pictures) belongs pari passu with the increasing articulacy and discussion about art that was a phenomenon of the Renaissance, and in particular beside the kind of poetry about portraiture that has been assembled and analysed by John Shearman in Chapter 3 of his book Only Connect. Shearman, indeed, underlines the stimulative, competitive interaction of poet-spectators' demands and artists' achievements. This interaction can be traced back to the interest at the turn of the fifteenth century, following contact with Byzantium, in the rhetorical exercise of ekpbrasts: ekpbrasi's evidently invited rivalry in 'describing' not only between poets and other poets, but between poets and painters. Initially, Guarino da Verona implicitly reserved to poets and denied to artists the possibility of ekphrasis in a letter of 1417, in which, reading Pausanias, he claimed he found his evocation of the monuments of Corinth 'more vivacious' (vivacior') in words even than the image ('effigies') itself. However, as soon as artists had once again 'brought alive' works described in classical authors - above all, but not only, Lucian - this position was inevitably weakened; in the generations following Guarino there was some argument about it.' Conspicuously, Leonardo was polemical on the part of artists, or specifically painters, in seeking to vindicate the range of possibilities and effects of art vis-'a-vis poetry (even if much critical debate that falls under the heading of paragone keeps within the field of art, most commonly contrasting painters and sculptors). It was largely accepted by the mid-sixteenth century, in the Florence of Benedetto Varchl and Giorgio Vasarl, that painters could not paint - or 'ekphrasize' - the 'inner' nature of living beings, but earlier and in northern Italy others under Leonardo's influence, such as Glorgione, might have been as combative as Leonardo himself in seeking to push back the perceived limits of art. What an artist thought he could show in art (or through art) surely deserves to be considered beside what his audience thought they could read in (or into) art.

FOOTNOTES

4 For the early humanist approach to art, see M. Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators, Oxford 1971, esp. pp. 78ff. Guarino's letter is Epistolario di Guarino Veronese, R. Sabbadini (Ed.), Venice 1915, vol. 1, p. 125, no. 59. For later 're-materializations' of ancient works of art, see M. J. Marek, Ekphrasis und Hemcbherallegorie, Worms 1985.

Giorgione's self-portrait p.3

My speculation is that Glorgione painted his self-portrait deliberately in order to set up a paragone to poetry, but because the picture 'termina ne' fatti', because the paragone is stated in purely pictorial terms, this artistic intention has never been recognized by posterity. The circumstantial evidence I have been able to marshal may be summarized as follows: there are signs that Glorgione was influenced by Leonardo and his ideas; there are other pictures of his circle which may be interpreted as referring to the paragone; the sources give some oblique support to an interpretation along these lines; and precisely the interpretation put forward here for Giorgione's self-portrait is later claimed by Aretino in 'parole' for a work by Titian.

Before turning to the intellectual context, we must first consider the self-por-trait itself, which is, unfortunately, by no means straightforward. By contrast to the paragone painting of a soldier attributed to Giorgione by Vasarl, there is no doubt that the work once existed, and probably we may infer it was known to cognoscenti. To his contemporaries, Glorgione was better known for his portraits and half-lengths than for other kinds of paintings, such as landscapes e per lo più non faceva altre opere, che mezze figure e ritrattl', according to Ludovico Dolce).[5] The self-portrait was in the most important collection of art in Venice of the time, that of the patriarchal' branch of the Grimani (it may have been acquired by Giovanni Grimani in Giorgione's lifetime; it is documented in 1528 in the inventory taken of his heirs' collections).[6] It was surely known to Michiel, even though the notes he presumably also made on the Italian works in the Grimani collection, as opposed to his extended list of the Netherlandish and German works there, which does survive, have been lost. The self-portrait is also reported by Vasari, in his second edition;[7] in so far as it survives, it is actually the only genuine work by Giorgione, excepting the almost entirely destroyed frescos on the Fontego de' Todeschi, known visually both to Vasarl and to modern scholarship. In his second edition, Vasari opened his Life of Glorgione with the very same three works in the Grimani collection, the self-portrait, 'un generale di esserciti' and a 'putto', that are listed together in the 1528 inventory, and among these the self-portrait was the most ambitious.

FOOTNOTES

5 Ludovico Dolce, Dialogo della pittura intitolato Aretino, in Trattati darte del Cinquecento fra Manierismo e Controriforma, P. Barocchi (Ed.), Bari 1960-2, vol. 1, pp. 141-206 (esp. p. 202).

6 P. Paschini, 'Le collezioni archeologiche dei prelati Grimani del Cinquecento', Atti della Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia, Rendiconti, 5, 1926-7, pp.149ff. (esp. p. 170); idem, Dornenico Grimani Cardinale di San Marco (tl523), Rome 1943, pp. 153-4.

7 Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de'più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori, P. Barocchi and R. Bettarini (Eds), Florence 1966-, vol. 4, p. 41.

Giorgione's self-portrait p.4

The woodcut portrait of Giorgione appended to his Life in Vasari's second edition (pl. 1) is evidently based on the Grimani self-portrait, and so, with independent knowledge of the original but adapted after the example of Vasarl's woodcut, is the portrait in Ridolfi's Life of Giorgione.[8] By the time Ridolfi was writing, the self-portrait had left Venice, and, according to Ridolfi, was in the collection of the brothers Van Veerle in Antwerp, still together with the 'general of armies' and the putto.[9] Hollar made engraved copies of nine of the Venetian works in this collection, including the Self-portrait, dated 1650 (Pl. 2);[10] his others, where they can be compared to the originals, are accurate in the detail if not in the proportions, and this copy agrees with Vasarl's woodcut and description, although Hollar's engraving is fuller and more precise, featuring a 'stepped' sill of the kind peculiar to pictures of Giorgione's circle. Thereafter, the picture itself disappears from view (along with its companions). The painting in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum in Brunswick with which it has been identified (Pl. 3) is first recorded in 1744, as a copy after Glorgione.[11] There is a further derivation in Budapest;[12] there is also a copy in Hampton Court (Pl. 4), which is already mentioned in 1628.[13] One's immediate impression is surely that the Hampton Court picture (though it, too, is not complete) agrees with the Hollar engraving very closely, and that the Brunswick picture is a less accurate version.

The claim of the Brunswick picture to be the original portrait by Glorgione rests predominantly on X-ray evidence published in 1959. " X-rays revealed beneath the present surface a Madonna holding a child in an individual composition very like one by Catena. However, even if the Madonna dates from Giorgione's period, the present surface need not do so; indeed, the earlier composition is incomplete, and the support must therefore have been reduced before the present image in its supposed original form was painted over it. If the two complete compositions are reconstructed, they do not fit together (Pl. 5). There is, furthermore, a marked difference in technique and medium (tempera as opposed to oils) between the Madonna beneath and the portrait above. It seems more likely that a picture of the Madonna contemporary to Giorgione was cannibalized at some later time in order to create the Brunswick Self-portrait than that Giorgione had been involved in reproducing or inspiring another artist's composition, then, deciding to make a portrait of himself, cut the canvas down and changed the medium he was using. It is coincidental that Vincenzo Catena, the author of the composition beneath, has been revealed by an inscription on the back of Glorgione's 'Laura' in Vienna to have been Giorgione's 'cholega' (Pl. 8).[15]

FOOTNOTES

8 Carlo Ridolfi, Le Maraviglie d'Arte, D. von Hadeln (Ed.), Berlin 1914-24; T. Pignatti, Giorgione, London 1971, pl. 218.

9 See further K. Garas, 'Giorgione e Giorgionisme au siecle XVIIE, I', Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-Arts, 25, 1964, pp. 51ff. (esp. p. 54).

10 Indexed under Verle in G. Parthey, Wenzel Hollar. Beschreibendes Verzeichnis seiner Kupferstiche, Berlin 1853, p. 309.

11 G. Adriani, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig: Verzeicbnis der Gemälde, Brunswick 1969, p. 65; Pignatti 1971 (as in n. 8 above), cat. Cl; Selbstbildnisse und Kiinstlerportraits von Lucas van Leyden bis Anton Raphael Mengs, exh. cat., Brunswick 1980, cat. 1, pp. 38-42; C. Hornig, Giorgiones Spitwerk, Munich 1987, cat. 24, p. 213; M. Lucco, Giorgione, Milan 1995, p. 140; J. Anderson, Giorgione: Peintre de la 'bièveté poétique, Paris 1996, pp. 306-7.

12 Garas 1964 (as in n. 9 above), p. 78, suggested that Vasarl's woodcut might have been based on this work (Pignatti 1971, as in n. 8 above, cat. C2; Anderson 1996, as in u. 11 above, p. 324), also recorded by Hollar; but though the costume agrees with Vasari's woodcut, the pose of the head, the facial expression and the hair do not; if Vasari knew and used another version, would he not have mentioned it? The attribution to Giorgione of the Budapest picture remains highly dubious.

13 See J. Shearman, The Early Italian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, Cambridge 1983, cat. 112.

14 C. Müiller-Hofstede, 'Untersuchungen iiber Giorgiones Selbstbildnis in Braunschweig', Mitteilungen des Kunsthistoriscben Institutes in Florenz, 8, 1957-9, pp. 13-34 (esp. p. 14). In May 1995 the curator Sabine Jacob kindly confirmed to me that no new technical examination had been undertaken since that time.

15 J. Wilde, 'Ein unbeachtetes Werk Giorgiones', Jahrbuch der preuszischen Kunstsammlungen, 52, 1931, pp. 91-100 (esp. p. 93). The inscription reads: '1506 a di primo zugno fo fatto questo de man de maistro Zorzi da Chastel fr[anco] cholega de maistro Vizenzo Chaena ad istanzia de miser giacomo ... [veniziano?]'. Instead of transliterating the last word, Giacomo's surname, Wilde put an ellipsis, implying, as appears to be generally believed, that the last word is lost. It is not, as can be seen from Wilde's photograph; but it is very difficult to read. At the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Sylvia Ferino kindly had the back re-exan-iined, whereupon the inscription was discovered to have faded; but it reappeared under infra-red light. The lettering readily corresponds with no known Venetian family name.

Giorgione's self-portrait p.5

The crucial argument against the originality of the Brunswick picture, even if one were to rationalize its discrepancies with the Hollar engraving, is that the Hampton Court picture cannot have been copied from it. The Hampton Court figure is clearly more youthful, has a more pronounced frown (these furrows at the bridge of the nose are still more marked in the Hollar), and distinctly more elongated proportions; its handling in general is more timid, more restrained, less painterly. Then in the Brunswick canvas there is no trace of Goliath's head - neither on the surface nor in X-rays nor in infra-red photography - at the position at which both the Hollar print and the Hampton Court copy show it; the proportions of all three images differ, but the head and the hand holding it should appear at a level with the end of the lace that falls forward free against the shirt. Instead, in this area in the Br-unswick picture, there is only a vague dash of white paint, presumably meant to correspond to the highlit vertical ridge of the cuirass that is clear in the other two images." Not least, there is a red drape over the Brunswick figure's left shoulder that has no counterpart in the other copies, and, as far as can be seen, it is all of a piece with the rest of the picture. " The Brunswick portrait has a ruddiness in the face for which there is no counterpart in accredited works by Giorgione or his circle, the impasto'd highlights on the armour at the shoulder stand up flat in a manner foreign to Giorgione's Softer, more measured shading (but typical of the handling of oil-paint in the advanced seventeenth century), and it is odd that the figure's undershirt is not the lead-white white so typical of Glorgione's circle but rather a warm grey. Doubts have accompanied the Br-unswick picture from the earliest record through all the scholarly literature, and they must be permitted at last to prevail." Its poor condition makes the Brunswick picture hazardous to date, but the omission of Goliath's head suggests a post-Vasarl, historicizing motivation for the copy's creation.

The importance of the Royal Collection copy is that, though certainly cruder than the original, it restores to us a more schematic physiognomy, resembling the stylized ovals of the faces of the Boy with an Arrow in Vienna or the Venus in Dresden; more typically of the sixteenth century, it shows a more laborious contrapposto within a more constructed spatial recession, with a more painstaking lighting and modelling and foreshortening. Unfortunately the picture remains disfigured by overpaint (the features and hair are reinforced, the mouth repainted), otherwise abraded, and heavily obscured by varnish. It has very little freshness or colour. " Though otherwise agreeing fairly well, it suggests that the neck of Hollar's figure is too squat, and the foreground arm too perpendicular.

FOOTNOTES

17 Miiller-Hofstede (ibid.) was forced to suppose that the red cloak might b6' an addition by a restorer, but advanced no evidence for this. His claim that minor changes in the composition revealed by the X-rays prove it could not be a copy is not convincing.

18 Pignatti 1971 (as in n. 8 above) held out against Robertson (who had earlier wavered) and others that the Brunswick picture was a copy. In Hornig 1987 (as 'n n. 11 above), p. 213, the verbal opinion of the conservator Knut Nicolaus that there were grounds for believing the picture a copy is quoted, though Hornig chooses not to endorse them and elsewhere Nicolaus has accepted the picture's originality (K. Nicolaus, Gerndlde untmucbt, entdeckt, erforscht, Brunswick 1979, p. 219). J. Anderson, reviewing Hornig in Kunstkronik, 42, 1989, pp. 432-6 (esp. p. 432), and in her own book of 1996 (as in n. 11 above), pp. 306-7, has also supposed the picture original; Lucco 1995 (as in n. 11 above), p. 140, reports opinion divided.

19 For the seventeenth-century reception of Glorgione, see P. Holberton, 'La critica e fortuna di Giorgione: il conflitto delle fonti', in La pittura nel Veneto: Il Cinquecento, M. Lucco (Ed.), vol. 3, Milan 1999, pp. 1115-40. 20 These comments incorporate those of Viola Pemberton-Pigott of the Royal Collection Trust, who kindly examined the picture at my request Oetter to the author, 4 April 1995).

Giorgione's self-portrait p.6

On this better basis, one can be more precise than hitherto about the iconography of Giorgione's lost picture and about the way in which a number of surviving early sixteenth-century Venetian works relate to it. Directly derivative, as may now be more clearly seen, is a male portrait by an anonymous artist closely contemporary to Giorgione now in the Kress Collection in the National Gallery, Washington (Pl. 6).[21] This picture borrows the Self-portrait's entire compositional scheme, and specifically the pose of the head, the foreshortening from below, the relationship of the body to the similarly split parapet, and the position of the grasping hand, for which, as X-rays show, this artist struggled to invent a suitable alternative attribute. The X-rays have been supposed to reveal a clutched sword or dagger,[22] but the shadow taken to be a sword-hilt was in fact created by a stretcher-key below the support.[23] The kerchief and the book have little apparent meaning, though the clenched fist goes well with the domineering pose and expression of the head. This forcefulness also fits the inscription 'VVO', assuming that this should be expanded to 'Virtus Vincit Omnia', a motto found among other similar protestations in the frieze of the so-called Casa Giorgione in Castelfranco, a widely-accepted attribution to Giorgione.[24] The Casa Glorgione frieze carries not only the message 'Vir-tus vincit omnia' but the connected mottos 'Sola virtus clara eternaque habetur' and 'Tempus territ' (sic for 'terit', 'wears away') - the latter directly recalling the Col Tempo inscribed on Giorgione's 'La vecchi'a' in the Accademia in Venice. A still closer connection between this frieze and Giorgione's paintings is provided by the crude diagrams of solar and lunar eclipses (with their labels the wrong way round!) which Giorgione used again, shuffled, on the parchment held by the right‑hand of the Three Philosophers.[25] Simply 'V V', or 'Virtus Vincit', is found on the parapet of Giorgione's accepted male portrait in the Staatliche Museen, Berlin.[26] Initials or emblems of similar or broadly similar intent occur on several other portraits of the time, often on parapets before the sitter that appear to have been 'stepped' specially in order to accommodate it or them (notably one of good quality, unconvincingly attributed to Cariani, in the Brera; Pl. 7).[27] Again, the laurel of Glorgione's Vienna 'Laura' (Pl. 8) is a visual emblem of victory. Reasonably, one could suppose that Giorgione's portrayal of himself in the figure of David makes the same comment about his own portrait, visually and allegorically, namely that virtue conquers.

FOOTNOTES

21 Pignatti 1971 (as in n. 8 above), cat. 31; R. F. Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian
Paintings in the National Gallery of art, Washington, Washington, D.C., 1979, pp. 213-7; Le Siecle de Titien, exh. cat., Paris 1993, cat. 41; Lucco 1995 (as in n. 11 above), p. 141; Anderson 1996 (as in n. 11 above), p. 345. Although Miiller-Hofstede 1957-9 (as in n. 14 above) (for the first time, to my knowledge) related this picture to Giorgione's Self-portrait, the two paintings are usually discussed without reference to each other.

22 R. Pallucchini, 'Il restauro del ritratto di gentiluomo veneziano K. 475 della National Gallery of Art di Washington', Arte Veneta, 16, 1962, pp. 234-7.

23 Examination sununary, February 1990, curatorial records, National Gallery of Art, Washington.

24 G. Padoan, 'Il niito di Giorgione intellettuale', in Giorgione e lumanesimo veneziano, 2 vols, R. Pallucchini (Ed.), Florence 1981, vol. 1, pp. 425-55 (esp. p. 430, n. 10); Siecle de Titien 1993 (as in n. 21 above), cat. 41. The idea advanced by N. T. Grummond, 'VV and Related Inscriptions in Giorgione, Titian and Diirer', Art Bulletin, 47, 1975, p. 346, that the Vs stand for 'viv-us' and 'verus' and derive from inscriptions beneath classical epitaphs has several weaknesses: for example, the word 'vivus' is used in the epitaphs to indicate which of those represented or responsible for the monument was alive rather than dead, and not to comment on the nature of the portraiture. There is no Renaissance case (that she cites or I know) in which the message supposed to be borne by these initials is expanded. Further arguments against are given in Siecle de Titien 1993 (as above), cat. 41. The mottos of the Casa Giorgione are set in their cultural context by M. Pastore Stocchi, 'G. B. Abioso e l'umanesimo astrologico a Treviso', in La letteratura, la rappresentazione, la musica al tempo e nei luoghi di Giorcione, M. Muraro (Ed.), Rome 1987, pp. 17-38.

25. These derive from the elementary astronomical textbook by Johannes Engel, of which there were many similar editions: see V. Mass6na, prince d'Essling, Les Livres a figures venitiens de la fin du XVe et du commencement du XVIe siecle, Florence, Paris 19C7‑14, vol. 1, p. 387, nos 432‑5. The sun is half‑hidden by the philosopher's hand, but above it the crescent shape of the earth with the circle of the moon projected over it and the moon to the left, small, are clear. By way of comparison, the same schematic diagram appears on the disc beside Giulio Campagnola's 'Astrologer' (Hind 9; see now P. Holberton, 'Notes on Giulio Campagnola's Prints', Print Quarterly, 13, 4, 1996, pp. 397ff.).

26 Pignatti 1971 (as in n. 8 above), cat. 11; Hornig 1987 (as in n. 11 above), cat. 14; Siecle de Titien 1993 (as in n. 21 above), cat. 16; Lucco 1995 (as in n. 11 above), p. 74; Anderson 1996 (as in n. 11 above), p. 296. Despite the consensus of these writers, this picture has also been attributed to Titian, and this view is still held. The inscription, though not now original, seems more likely to have been retouched together with other parts of the canvas than to have been a later interpolation.

27 Inscribed CE on the raised parapet; see Musei e Gallerie di Milano: Pinacoteca di Brera: Scuola veneta, Milan 1990, p. 212. The present lettering may well not be original, but the area is unlikely to have been blank. For the pictures by Titian in the National Gallery inscribed 'T.V.' and for a derivative of the male portrait dated 1512 and known in three versions, and also for the picture known in several versions of a woman in white called Violante, inscribed with a 'V' on the parapet, see below in the text and related notes. There is a problematic portrait of 'Alvise Crasso' with 'V.V.' on the sill and the date 1‑;08 (Pignatti 1971, as in n. 8 above, cat. A25, whereabouts unknown); a portrait in Budapest of 'Antonio Brocardo', with a philosopher's hat inscribed V. and a tricep5, perhaps meaning prudence; see Pignatti 1971 (as in n. 8 above), cat. A7; Siecle de Titien 1993 (as in n. 21 above), cat. 25; Lucco 1995 (as in n. 11 above), p. 94; Anderson 1996 (as in n. 11 above), p. 307, and others

Giorgione's self-portrait p.7

This is not what Vasari tells us: he describes Giorgione's Self‑portrait as 'fatta per Davit ‑ e per quel che si dice, 'e il suo ritratto', reflecting an incomprehension of Venetian allegory that is more obviously apparent in his disingenuous remarks about the frescos on the Fontego de' Todeschl[28] However, he reproduces, in this questioning tone, the very words of the 1528 inventory: 'F~tratto di Zorzon di sua mano fatto per david e Golia'. In the most basic terms, this clearly was seen as a self‑portrait; but it was also seen as something more, as allegorizing. Though Vasarl claimed not to recognize the significance of the Judt't fatta per Giustizia above the entrance on Titian's facade of the Fontego de' Todeschi, that significance is pretty clear; even though he does not unquestioningly accept the combination involved of a representation of the artist as David, its significance is again pretty clear: it is a visual representation of virtuous victory. There is no doubt that that is how David's conquest of Goliath was seen at the time, notably as depicted by Donatello, whose bronze David is reflected in the pose of Glorgione's own Judith in St Petersburg.[29]

 In the original Glorgione's illusionistically confrontational figures, caught in the instant, have an elusive, meditative reticence, and one can imagine something similar when standing before the Brunswick picture. However, the melancholy that the Brunswick copy has conveyed to several observers really is not appropriate to Giorgione's original.[30] Rather, the furrows on the brow (attested by Hollar and the Hampton Court copy) should be referred to those on Colleoni's in the monument by San Zanipolo, or possibly to the 'ciglia basse e strette' Leonardo recommended for an angry figure.[31] This David bears no harp; his armour marks him as a warrior, or rather as a knight,[32] and the blood still drips from Goliath's severed artery.

FOOTNOTES

28 A fuller analysis of the Fontego 'programme', including a discussion of Vasari's reaction to it, can be found in P. Holberton, 'Poetry and Painting in the Time of Giorgione', PhD diss., Warburg Institute, University of London 1989.

29 See C. M. Sperling, 'Donatello's Bronze "David" and the demands of Medici politics', The Burlington Magazine, 134, 1992, pp. 218ff., and M. M. Donato, 'Hercules and David in the Early Decoration of the Palazzo Vecchio: Manuscript Evidence', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 54, 1991, pp. 83ff. See also J. Bialostocki, 'La gamba sinistra della Giuditta: 11 quadro di Giorgione nella storia del tema', in Giorgione e lumanesimo 1981 (as in n. 24 above), vol. 1, pp. 193ff.; I have not found S. Smith, 'A Nude Judith from Padua and the Reception of Donatello's Bronze David', Comitatis, 25, 1994, p. 59, but it may well be germane.

30 Cf. Miiller‑Hofstede 1957‑59 (as in n. 14 above), p. 30, followed by J. Anderson, 'The Giorgionesque Portrait: From Likeness to Allegory', in Giorgione. Atti del convegno internazionale di studio .... F. Pedrocco (Ed.), Asolo 1979, pp. 153ff. (esp. p. 154). S. Jacob, in Selbstbildnisse 1980 (as in n. 11 above), observed that such a melancholic interpretation would have been unique, and J.Woods‑Marsden, Renaissance Self‑Portraiture. The Visual Construction of Identity and the Social Status of the Artist, New Haven, London 1998, p. 118, related the work rather to Mantegna's self‑portrait.

31 Leonardo, Richter (Eds) 1970 (as in n. 2 above) , item 584 (BN 2038, fol. 29r).

32 For David as a figure of the perfect knight, see M. Keen, Chivalry, New Haven, London 1984, pp. 119‑23.

Giorgione's self-portrait p.8

The triumph of virtue over adversity was a platitudinous Renaissance theme, hardly less so than the transience of the flesh. Giorgione would seem to have taken up both themes and to have begun devising iconographies involving them early in his career [33] ‑ illustrating the former probably for the first time in his surviving oeuvre in the still crudely foreshortened Warrior in Vienna.[34] This painting appears to depend on the well‑known drawing by Leonardo of Five heads in the Royal Library at Windsor, on the back of which there is an inscription opposing good and evil.[35] If in the Glorgione a young man is the protagonist rather than an old one, this is not likely to have been the only work by Leonardo Glorgione had seen. Giovanni Grimani was the probable owner within their lifetimes not only of three works by Glorgione but also of at least two by Leonardo: 'Uno quadro una testa con girlanda di man di lunardo vinci' and 'Uno quadro testa di bambocio di lunardo vincl' ('A picture [oo a head with garland by the hand of Leonardo Vinci'; 'A picture [ofl a head of [a] putto by Leonardo Vinci').[36] These offer striking precedent in general for the 'sub)ectless' heads and half‑lengths for which Glorgione became known, but the 'bambocio' in particular was presumably a direct precedent for Glorgione's lost Grimani putto and similarly the 'testa con girlanda' for the Vienna Warrior (owned by Zuanantonio Venier).[37] The Grimani inventory of 1528 also includes 'six bizarre heads on paper' which are likely to have been by Leonardo as well.[38] It is, further, difficult to suppose that Glorgione's 'Laura' was painted without some knowledge of Leonardo's Ginevra de'Benci, commissioned by Bernardo Bembo[39] whose son Pietro owned a copy by Giulio Campagnola of a design by Giorgione.[40]

FOOTNOTES

34 Pignatti 1971 (as in n. 8 above), cat. A64; Leonardo and Venice / Leonardo e Venez" exh. cat., Venice 1992, cat. 67; Siecle de Titien 1993 (as n. 21 above), cat. 26. For the provenance and identification of the Vienna Wart‑ior, overlooked in Anderson 1996 (as in n. 11 above), p. 304, see P. Holberton, 'La bibliotechina e la raccolta d'arte di Zuanantonio Venier', Atti dell'Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere edarti, 144, 1985‑6, pp. 173ff.

35 Windsor RL 12495; the inscription is Leonardo, Richter (Eds) 1970 (as in n. 2 above), vol. 2, p. 340, item 1355. See now M. Clayton, article forthcoming in Apollo, August 2002, on this drawing and Giorgione's picture.

36 Paschini 1926‑7 (as in n. 6 above), p. 174; this item, inissed by the contributors to the 1992 Leonardo and Venice exhibition catalogue (as in n. 34 above), was pointed out by J. Anderson, in 'Leonardo and Giorgione in the Grimani Collection', Accademia Leonardo Vinci. Journal of Leonardo Studies and Bibliography of Vinciana, 8, 1995, pp. 226‑7 (esp. p. 226).

37 For whom see Holberton 1985‑6 (as in n. 34 above).

38 Paschini 1926‑7 (as in n. 6 above), p. 181; for Leonardo's caricatures, see M. Kwakkelstein, Leonardo da Vinci as a Phystognomist: Theory and Drawing Practice, Leyden 1994.

39 J. Fletcher, 'Bernardo Bembo and Leonardo's portrait of Ginevra de' Benci', The Burlington Magazine, 131, 1989, pp. 8 1 lff. 40 Marcantonio Michiel, Notizia dopere di disegno, G. Frizzoni (Ed.), Bologna 1884, p. 51.

Giorgione's self-portrait p.9

A further possible means of contact between Giorgione and Leonardo is provided by the engineer and architect Giorgio Spavento, proto to the city of Venice from 1486. He was assigned with two others in March 1500 to inspect defences against the Turks in the Friuli,[41] an inspection with which Leonardo by one means or another was also involved.[42] Spavento is further documented along with Glorgione on a job in the Doge's Palace in 1507,[43] and is likely to have brought Giorgione in to paint frescos the following year on the Fontego de' Todeschl, for which as proto he was responsible.[44] There is also, of course, the report by Vasari introduced into his second edition of Giorgione's Life that Giorgione had seen work by the hand of Leonardo; while this may have been an invention designed to support the notion in Vasari that all pioneers of what he called the 'terza maniera' worked in a style derived from the Tuscan master, it may also be a piece of information picked up at the same time as and together with the notice of the three Grimani pictures by Giorgione.

Evidence that contact between Giorgione and Leonardo may not simply have involved sight of Leonardo's work but also embraced reception of his ideas, particularly about contrasts between art, poetry and music, comes from the well‑known passage in Paolo Pino's treatise of 1548, repeated in what appears to be an independent variation in Vasari, that Glorgione painted a in Vasari, the picture in paragone with sculpture.[45] A St George in Pino, a nude picture may well not have existed as either of them described it, since the germ of the story seems to be the picture of a bathing scene by Van Eyck known to Bartolomeo Facio, who comments on its reflections, and to Vasari, who reports it in Urbino.[46]It is not the paragone itself that recalls Leonardo, but the terms in which it is conceived: in both Pino's and Vasari's versions the painting with reflections rivals sculpture in the totality and instantaneity of the impression it makes on the beholder, which is very much in accord with Leonardo's repeated argument that art delivers more immediately and effectively than words (or music), which work through time, and is therefore superior to poetry.[47]

FOOTNOTES

42 See P. C. Marani, 'Leonardo in Venice and the Veneto. Documents and Evidence', ibid., pp. 23‑36.

43 G.B. Lorenzi, Monumenti per servire alia storia del Palazzo Ducale di Venezia, Venice 1868, item 141; R. Maschio, 'Una verifica dei documenti dell'archivio', Antichit~ Viva, 17, 4‑5, 1978, pp. 5ff.

44 See further J. McAndrew, Venetian Architecture of the Early Renaissance, Cambridge, MA, 1980, p. 426.

45 Barocchi (Ed.) 1960‑2 (as in n. 5 above), vol. 1, p. 131; Vasari, Barocchi (Ed.) 1966‑ (as in n. 7 above), vol. 4, p. 46.

46 Vasari, Barocchi (Ed.) 1966‑ (as in n. 7 above), vol. 1, p. 133; M. Baxandall, 'Bartholomaeus Facius on Painting. A Fifteenth‑Century Manuscript of the De Viris Illustribus', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 28, 1965, pp. 90ff. (esp. pp. 102‑3); G. T. Faggin, Lopera completa del Van Eyck, Milan 1968, nos 58, 61. See further A. J. Martin, Savoldos sogenanntes 'Bildnis des Gaston de Foix': zum Problem des Paragone in der Kunst und Kunsttheorie der italienischen Renaissance, Sigmaringen 1995; and Helke 1999 (as in n. 3 above).

47 Passages by Leonardo contrasting painting to the other arts are gathered together in La letteratura italiana. Storia e testi, XXXH, 1, Scritti dell'arte del Cinquecento. 11. Pittura scultura poesia musica, P. Barocchl (Ed.), Milan, Naples 197 1; but see C. J. Farago, Leonardo da Vinci's Paragone: A Critical Interpretation with a New Edition of the Text in the Codex Urbinas, Leyden 1992.

Giorgione's self-portrait p.10

This evidence in turn makes it more likely that one painting Giorgione really did paint, his 'Laura', was also intended to function in the terms of a paragone, this time as a challenge to poetry. This damaged painting has caused much confusion and speculation, which this paper cannot hope to resolve,[48] but the notion that the 'Laura' was an intended 'rival' to poetry is buttressed by the existence of a contemporary poem by Girolamo Bologni, doubting whether Petrarch in his poetry or Jacopo Bellini in his painting ' the archetype of 'Laura', otherwise unrecorded, had depicted a more praiseworthy Laura.[49] Published apparently for the first time in Degenhart and Schmidt's catalogue of Jacopo Bellini's drawings, this poem is evidently not widely known and so is worth repeating here:

In archetypa Laurae effigies in pictura Jacobi Bellini:
Si tall facie fuit puella
qualem mira refert tabella: per te
vix laudata satis fult Petrarca:
sin talls fuit ipsa Laura, quale <m>
laudas carrninibus tuis Petrarca
est pictura minor; proculque distat <.>
Atqui munus utrumque tam decorum est
ut vos non homines ratus fu'lsse <m>
o par gloria pictor et poeta.
Divinum ingenium utriusque mirer
sed quac materiam dedit canendi
caeli sydera lucet inter alta
iam non Laura suae invidens Dianae

On the archetype of Laura a likeness in painting by Jacopo Bellini
If the girl was with such a face
as the marvellous tablet reports: by you,
Petrarch, she was hardly sufficiently praised.
But if Laura herself was such as
you praise her in your poetry, Petrarch,
the picture is the lesser, and a long way short.
However, the talent of both is so fitting
that I would not have thought you mortals,
o painter and o poet equal in glory!
Let me adaiire the divine genius of both,
while the woman who provided the matter for singing
shines among the high stars of heaven
not now with any envy for her own Diana

Presumably, though it was specifically Petrarch's Laura, this was not a straightforward portrait of Laura, like the one recorded by Michiel in Pietro Bembo's collection[50] ‑ Bellini's painting conveyed something more than the mere features, so as to suggest Laura's virtuous chastity ('her' Diana because she was devoted to the chaste goddess), and justifying the contrast between the 'archetype' of Laura of the title and the 'matter', or flesh, of the historical Laura. One would expect some kind of symbolism, even if it were no more than a framing device like that surrounding Jacopo's portrait of Mehmet Il in the National Gallery, London. However Girolamo may have justified Bellini's equal status to Petrarch, the basis on which Giorgione's 'Laura' competes with the poet's is surely, by contrast, its eroticism. Giorgione's painting may not come across today as particularly voluptuous, but the woman is undeniably nude, showing her breast. In Leonardo's writings, art's trump over words is its ability immediately to inspire concupiscence, whereas poetry takes time, at best, to inflame.[51] Giorgione's laureate, i.e. victorious, woman is not a portrait of Petrarch's material Laura (who was well known to be blonde, for example, and, besides, chaste), but she is a paradigm of female beauty and male desire, and as such a challenge to the vision that Petrarch depicts of his own desired. Implicit in Giorgione's conception may be a kind of paragone that is found occasionally in poetry before the Canzoniere, including Dante, then commonly in the Canzoniere itself and in other love poetry after it ‑ the metaphor of the lover 'painting' (or 'writing' or sculpting') the image of his beloved in his heart.

FOOTNOTES

49 See B. Degenhart and A. Schmidt, Corpus der itali'eniscben Zeicbnungen 1300‑1450, II, 5‑8, Venedig. Jacopo Bellini, Berlin 1990, vol. 11, 5, p. 20, n. 17. For Girolamo Bologni see notably A. Gentili, I giardini di contemplazione, Rome 1985, ch. 1.

50 Michiel, Frizzoni (Ed.) 1884 (as in n. 40 above), p. 50.

51 This point has now also been made in Helke 1999 (as in n. 3 above). She sees the 'Laura' as a kind of Muse.

Giorgione's self-portrait p.11

The idea that Giorgione may have depicted a'Laura' of the kind that the lover would find written, sculpted or painted in his own hear‑t may even be necessary to understanding the painting, because the image in the heart might be, indeed usually was, blatantly erotic, regardless of the real comportment of the beloved. One might say that the painting's sexual nudity marks it precisely as a vision of the heart (an erotic fantasy) and not as a real woman. Petrarch's visions of Laura are sometimes clearly erotic, without of course Laura herself, the material Laura, being unchaste. Petrarch also, not in his two sonnets on Simone's portrait of Laura, but in sonnet no. CXXX, himself had made the paragone that the image Love painted in his heart was more beautiful than the work of the artists of antiquity:[52]

... 
E sol ad una imagine m'attengo
che fe' non Zeusi o Prasitele o Fidia
ma miglior maestro e di piu alto ingegno

And only to one image I attach myself,
made not by Zeuxis or Praxiteles or Phidias,
but by a better master and one of higher genius

this 'better master' being Love, often invoked as the writer, painter or sculptor who impresses the beloved in the poet's imagination. (I have not undertaken a wider search specifically for this metaphor, but the notion is as extensively developed as one could wish at one point in Lorenzo de' Medici's Comento, and also utilized in Philip Sydney's Arcadia: see Appendix).

A context of paragone suggests the imputation of a further motivation to Giorgione's self‑portrait as David. As we have seen, showing himself as David visually encapsulates what had been stated in an inscription ‑ 'virtus vincit' in previous portraits, and by this device represents an invisible quality there intimated by a label. To represent the inner, invisible quality, however, is to trespass on the sphere of poetry and words, which alone are meant to be able to convey such abstractions in the discussion of the paragone conducted in the academy at Florence in the mid‑sixteenth century.[53] This does not appear to be an idea that Leonardo had come across or argued against, although it is clearly anticipated in the inscription beside Ghirlandalo's 1488 Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni in the Thyssen Collection, and flirted with in humanist epigrams on portraiture particularly in Rome.[54] Given, though, that paragone was a topic In vogue, and that the same patron demonstrably had contacts to Leonardo, it is a reasonable hypothesis that in depicting himself as David Giorgione intended to 'demonstrate' that painting could in fact represent the inner, supposedly unrepresentable quality of vir‑tue. It is even possible that Giorgione's Vecchia in the Accademia in Venice was in 1567 called 'Giorgione's mother' by analogy with his self‑portrait;[55] and, just as La Vecchia herself seems actually to regret personally the universal of her aging condition, so, if we had the original of Giorgione's self‑portrait, we should surely see his virtuous character and spirit expressed pictorially as well as embodied iconographically.

FOOTNOTES

53 Most obviously Benedetto Varchi in the third dispute of his 'Della maggloranza delle arti', in Barocchi (Ed.) 1960‑2 (as in n. 5 above), vol. 1, pp. 55‑8.

54 Thyssen Collection; see for the epigram from Martial and for early sixteenth‑century contemporary comment on portraiture J. Shearman, Only Connect: Art and the Spectator in the Italian Renaissance, Princeton 1992, ch. 3, 'Portraits and Poets'.

55 A. Ravi, 'Il camerino delle anticaglie di Gabriele Vendramin', Nuovo Archivio Veneto, 39, 1920, pp. 155ff. (esp. p. 178).

Giorgione's self-portrait p.12

If there is no direct precedent for such an enterprise by Giorgione, there is no precedent, either, for an allegorizing self‑portrait,[56] and further circumstantial evidence that it once bore the weight I have suggested can be found in certain surviving works painted immediately afterwards, supplemented by hints in the sources. Above all, even if the capacity of painting to reproduce inner qualities was denied, without counter‑argument, in later discussions in Florence, Aretino in Venice would assert for Titian in 'parole' exactly the pictorial reach that I have surmised Giorgione's self‑portrait was intended to attain.

Sebastiano Veneziano, subsequently known as Del Plombo, seems to have emerged from Glorgione's studio around or very shortly after 1506,[57] and his Salome (also called Judith) in the National Gallery, London, dated 1510 (Pl. 9), may be seen as a development both of Giorgione's ' Laura' and of his self‑portrait. The facial type or the actual model is the same as the ' Laura', and the motif of the severed head is taken up from the self‑portrait. The woman's victory is clear, although its meaning is different if she is read as Judith ‑ virtue conquers lust ‑ or as Salome ‑ beauty conquers resistance.[58] Titian painted the same subject, giving Salome (or Judith) the features of Glorgione's Venus and the severed head apparently his very own ‑ the Cupid pointing his arrow from the keystone rendering the conquest by the woman of the man explicit.[59] As now inverted, the idea was taken up in the next century, notably by Allori,[60] and then others: indeed, the conquered artist's severed head had a greater fortuna than Glorgione's original invention, even if Giorgione initiated the conceit of the self‑portrait with a message.

FOOTNOTES

56 For artists' self‑portraits see Woods‑Marsden 1998 (as in n. 30 above), and for the 'isolation' of Giorgione's 'experiment', for which this paper hopes to provide in fact a context, p. 117.

57 This view, though it cannot be properly argued here, depends on two cardinal suppositions: that Michiel's notice that he completed Giorgione's Three Philosophers (evidently not a late work by Giorgione, so unlikely to have been finished after his death) is correct and implies Sebastiano's assistance; and that Sebastiano painted the highly Giorgionesque Accademia sacra conversazione with St Catherine (N4. Lucco, Lopera completa di Sebastiano del Piombo, Milan 1980, cat. 248): for this view see especially M. Hirst, Sebastiano del Piombo, Oxford 1981, pp. 4‑6, pls 1‑3. However, the 'early' half‑length of a young girl in Budapest (Lucco 1980, as above, cat. 4; Hirst 1981, as above, pp. 4, 93‑4) seems inconsistent with this development and would have to be denied to Sebastiano.

58 For the idea that the painting represents Judith, see P. joannides, 'Titian's Judith and its context: the iconography of decapitation', Apollo, 135, 1992, pp. 163ff.; however, the woman bears no sword, a standard attribute of Judith, and the head resides on a platter, a standard attribute of St John the Baptist (frequently occurring as a depicted object of devotion by itselo, so where is the ambiguity? See also the next note.

Giorgione's self-portrait p.13

Again, on Titian's female portrait with a profile bust on the parapet in the National Gallery, London, known as 'La Scbiavona' (Pl. 10), the letters 'T.V.' surely refer back to earlier portraits bearing the inscription 'V.' or 'V.V.'[61] and constitute a pun, meaning both 'Titianus Vecellius' and 'Titianus Vincit'. Not simply the painter, but Titian the painter vanquishes sculptors, since his portrait is so much more life‑like than the relief bust, and by extension antiquity; he also vanquishes fellow artists.[62] Titian's Man with a blue sleeve in the National Gallery (Pl. 11) has the same two initials, which are still more likely to bear this latter meaning if the picture may be supposed, as has frequently been claimed,[63] a self‑portrait. If it is a self‑portralt, then surely Titian painted it with conscious reference to Glorgione's self‑portrait, reducing Glorgione's presentation of his art's 'superiority' to a simpler rivalry ‑ with Titian claiming greater impact, greater colorito.[64] That there was sharp rivalry between artists in Venice around this time is suggested by the inscription complaining of envy by Jacopo de' Barbarl on his Madonna in the Louvre[65] and by Dolce's report, taken up in Vasari's second edition, that Glorgione was extremely miffed to have been praised for Titian's work on the Fontego de' Todeschi.[66] (rhe knife in the wound was that Titian's work was on the less prominent and prestigious side, the landward entrance to the Fontego, arousing the implicit query, why should you have painted the minor fagade better than the main one?) There seems, too, to have been another portrait by Titian, according to Vasari representing a member of the Barbarigo family, which from his description was evidently similar both to The man with a blue sleeve and to Giorgione's Berlin portrait,[67] and which we may deduce probably again bore his T.V.: Vasarl's comment, that 'se Tiziano non vi avesse scritto in ombra il suo nome, sarebbe stato tenuto opera di Giorgione' ('if Titian had not written his name in shadow, it would have been taken as a work by Glorgione') has generally been taken simply to mean that Titian imitated Glorgione's style very closely, something that he does not in fact appear to have done. Another explanation is that Vasari, no more comprehending the enjeu here than when reporting Glorgione's self‑portrait, adapted an original piece of information explaining Titian's 'T.V.' as a swipe at Glorgione to his own notion of the similarity of the two artists' styles (into which he had been led by the misinformation of his 1550 edition).[68]

FOOTNOTES

61 Possibly Titian's Schiavona shows reference to a painting known in three versions, in Modena, Budapest and formerly a private collection in Boston: Lucco 1980 (as in n. 57 above), cat. 193; R. Pallucchini and F. Rossi, Giovanni Cariani, Bergamo 1983, cat. A27, A42, A54; P. Rylands, Palma Vecchio, Cambridge 1992, cat. A12; Tiziano: Amor Sacro e Profano 1995 (as in n. 59 above), cat. 26. The version in Budapest suggests the authorship of Sebastiano, though not his autography, in the brilliance of the white, the crinkling of the drapery, and the character and foreshortening of the face, recalling other females by the young Sebastiano. The discreet but unrnistakeable flower in her hair marks the woman as an invention rather than a portrait.

62 See L. Freedman, "'The Schiavona". Titian's Response to the Paragone between Painting and Sculpture', Arte Veneta, 41, 1987, pp. 31‑40.

63 See C. Gould, The Sixteenth‑ Century Italian Scbools, The National Gallery, London, repr. London 1975, p. 28 1; H. E. Wethey, The Paintings of Titian, II, The Portraits, London 1971, cat. 40; C. Hope, Titian, London 1980, p. 30.

64 Titian's portrait is not usually dated before 1510, but seems to be proved to be before 1512 by the date of the portrait deriving from it known in three versions: K. Garas, 'Giorgione et Giorgionisme au XVHE siecle, In', Bulletin du Musee Hongrois des Beaux‑Arts, 28, 1966, pp. 69‑93 (esp. p. 70); Pignatti 1971 (as in n. 8 above), cat. V15. The version in Munich (R. Kultzen and P. Eikemcier, Bayerische Staatsgemaldesammlungen. Alte Pinakothek Munchen: Venezianiscbe Gemilde des 15. und 16. jahrhunderts, Munich 1971, p. 208, no. 2276) bears the date MDXU, making it likely that the MDXI on the St Petersburg version is defective.

65 See J. A. Levenson, Jacopo de' Barbari and Northern Art of the Early Sixteenth Century, PhD diss., New York University 1978, cat. 2; the inscription reads: pascitur in vivis Livor, postfata quiescit I Tum suus ex merito quemque tuetur bonos; Ovid, Amores, 1, xv, 39‑40.

66 Barocchi (Ed.) 1960‑2 (as in n. 5 above) vol. 1, pp. 201‑2; Vasarl, Barocchi (Ed.) 1966‑ (as in n. 7 above), vol. 6, p. 157.

67 Ibid., vol. 6, p. 156.

68 See Holberton 1999 (as in n. 19 above) for further discussion of Vasari on Giorgione.

Giorgione's self-portrait p.14

Aretino, in his letters and sonnets addressed to Veronica Gambara on Titian's portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino (now in the Uffizi), claimed that Titian had conveyed the 'virilit'a de I'animo' of the former and Ivirtuti interne' of the latter. He did not, by contrast, believe that Apelles had been capable of depicting more than the outer form of Alexander:[69]

non finse gil [Apellel del peregrino subietto
l'alto vigor, che I'anima comparte,
Ma Tizian, che dal cielo ha maggior parte,
fuor mostra ogni invisibile concetto...

[Apelles] did not convey of his extraordinary sitter
the high vigour, in which the soul has a part,
but Titian, who has a greater share from Heaven,
shows outwardly every invisible idea ...

 The masculine, martial qualities of the Duke, corresponding to the standard, 'Petrarchan' virtues of the Duchess, are exactly those we might once have been able to detect in Glorgione's lost self‑portrait:

Egli ha il terror fra l'uno e I'altro ciglio,
I'animo in gli occhi e I'alterezza in fronte.

He has havoc between his brows,
spirit in his eyes and pride in his frown.

FOOTNOTES

Appendix: Pictures in the Heart

The relevant part of Lorenzo's sonnet, on which he comments in his Comento, is as follows:

Quanta invidia ti porto, o cor beato,
che quella man vezzosa or mulce or stringe,
tal ch'ogni vil durezza da te spinge; 
e poi che si gentil sei diventato,
talora il nome, a cui t'ha consecrato
Amore, il blanco dito in te dipinge,
or I'angelico viso informa e finge
or lieto or dolcemente perturbato

Lorenzo's comment is as follows:

Debbesi adunque presupporre che degnissima pittura fussi quella, della quale era ornato il cor niio; perche tre cose, secondo il giudizio mio, si convengono ad una perfetta opera di pittura, cioe il subietto buono, o muro, o legno, o panno, o altro che sia, sopra al quale distenda la pittura; ii maestro perfetto e di disegno e di colore; ed oltre a questo le cose dipente sieno di lot natura grate c piacevoli agli occhi: perche, ancora che la pittura fussi perfetta, potrebbe essere di qualiti quello cbe 'e dipinto, che non sarebbe secondo la natura di chi debbe vedere. Conciosiache alcuni si dilettano di cose allegre, come animali, verzure, balli e feste simiti; altri vorrebbono vedere battaglie o terrestri o maritime e simili cose marziali e fere; altri paesi, casamenti e scorci e proporzioni di prospettiva; altri qualche altra cosa diversa; e per6, volendo che una pittura interamente piaccia, bisogna adiungervi questa parte: che la cosa dipinta ancora per se diletti. Era il mio cuore materia e subietto molto atto a ricevere ogni impressione ....

 E. Bigi (Ed.), Lorenzo de' Medici, Scritti sceiti, Turin 1965, repr. 1977, p. 362.

 In Sydney's Arcadia, Book 1, there is a tournament, Philandrus having challenged all comers to try by battle whether his lady, whose portrait he displays, is the fairest of all, Contenders bring one after another pictures of their own ladies, except for an ill‑apparelled knight (who turns out to be Zelmane/Pyrocles), who has none, but declares: 'Certainly', said he, 'her liveliest picture, if you could see it, is in my heart Sir Philip Sydney, The Countess ofpembroke's Arcadia, V. Skretkowicz (Ed.), Oxford 1987, p. 103.