Part One

Besides the Assumption, there is another remarkable piece of work by Titian in the Frari Church in Venice. On the left hand side as you walk inside towards the Assumption at the end of the church, you will see the large painting known as the Pesaro Madonna.

I was not inclined to pay it very much attention. Although I was aware of it from a number of reproductions in various books, it didn't grab me. It was painted a few years after the Assumption, and by now Titian has left behind many of the characteristic features of classic Renaissance painting. 

Renaissance art, especially Florentine Renaissance art, is based upon a certain type of harmony; it is in this that a great deal of its attraction and effectiveness lies. The quality of harmony and balance is achieved with the aid of a certain kind of symmetry. Typical of this style might be artists such as Botticelli, Fras Angelico and Lippi, and Raphael in his earlier years.

As time passed, so did this rather obvious approach to achieving harmony. By the time that Titian painted the Pesaro Madonna, he had pretty much chucked the Renaissance painting handbook out of the window.

So, despite all that scrutinising of the painting over the months and years, I didn't get it. The symmetry and regularity by which Renaissance artists achieved such a pleasing, and sometimes uplifting, effect, were nowhere to be found in the Pesaro Madonna. Instead of the normal centre-stage of the Madonna with her bizarre-looking babe, in Titian's altarpiece they are pushed off way to the right, almost bundled out of the painting. High on a kind of pedestal, they look down on the typical motley assortment of saints, apostles, and patrons of the arts, who have more money than sense. 

In this case it's the Pesaro clan who are feted in the painting. They are not a hugely appealing bunch. And while they occupy the busy bottom of the painting, the upper part is given over mainly to to a pair of enormous stone pillars. I mean, what's that about?

When I stopped to look at the picture in situ in the Frari Basilica, I was stunned. All that had previously appeared strange and confusing suddenly made sense. It is partly a matter of viewpoint. In the church you stand somewhat below the painting, and look up at the action. Now a balance emerges, and the diagonals that art books make so much of in Titian's mode of achieving harmony manifest. In particular, ones eye is pulled magnetically across and up from the characters in the bottom left corner, irresistibly in the direction of the Madonna, who occupies centre-stage by virtue of the attention she draws, rather than any literal position in the painting.

Most arresting of all is the colour which radiates from parts of the painting. In the company of a small number of artists, Titian is capable of introducing us to colour which is not just colour slapped onto wall or canvas. Something more than colour shows itself. Something shines through the colour, something ethereal, or spiritual, or transcendental, even.

How did Titian create these effects? If you are like I was, you will assume that he just slapped paint onto a canvas, and somehow miraculously came up with these pictures. Wrong, very wrong. Read up on how Titian applied paint during this period of his life, how he brought into being this colour-light, and you may be amazed.     

"Contemporaries tell how he used to build up his pictures in oil over a reddish ground to communicate warmth to all the colours, turn the pictures face to the wall for months, and look at them anew as if they were his worst enemies. New layers might then be applied, especially the interminable glazes (the Italian word velatura  or veiling is very expressive) to tone down colours that might stare too much and to communicate a depth and richness of tone in which many colours, shadows, and lights seem miraculously suspended. 'Trenta, quaranta velatura!' ('Thirty, forty glazes!') he is said to have cried, and possibly there are that many, except where overzealous modern restorers have cleaned them off, stripping Titian's paintings to the brilliant colours he was at such pains to tone down and to unite." (History of Italian Renaissance Art, by Frederick Hartt). 

In this modern day and age of instant convenient mediocrity, I find this astonishing. Actually, at any time it is astonishing.

 

Part Two 

On the second day that we visited Venice we headed for the Church of San Zaccaria. This is located in a very different part of the city, not far from San Marco and the Doge's Palace. Here the prospect is more open, as it is beyond the point where the Grand Canal disgorges into the sea, or at least the lagoon. Personally I find it less charming than the labyrinth of narrow walkways that constitute the approach to the Frari, which is closer to the true geographical centre of Venice.

It is also far busier; vast numbers of day (or two-hour) trippers appear to arrive around San Marco. They presumably wander around, buy a souvenir or two from the waterside vendors who did not exist when I visited back in 1990, before heading back to their cruise liner or whatever.

The purpose of the visit to the church of San Zaccaria is to look at a painting there. It is a pretty big one, 'The Enthroned Madonna With Saints' of Giovanni Bellini, normally imaginatively referred to as the San Zaccaria altarpiece.

I had sought out numerous reproductions of this mighty work, and as a result I was keen to see it properly. 

The Bellini were a family of artists, but the common view (with which I agree) is that Giovanni was the most talented and visionary. Unlike most other Renaissance painters (Titian and Michelangelo are the main exceptions) who died all too young, he lived to a ripe old age, and his lifetime witnessed continual transformations in his style and technique, even right into old age. 

Nobody knows his year of birth, but he was most likely in his 70s when he produced his most evocative work. The San Zaccaria piece seems to be the apotheosis. It is organised in conservative Renaissance style, with the Madonna and bizarre baby centre-stage, surrounded by the usual suspects of saints and an angelic being playing a stringed instrument at the foot of the picture. However, here as in a few other paintings of his from this time, something else is going on.

If I gaze upon this piece for any length of time, I feel communicated a mystical sense of unity unlike anything else I have seen in a work of art. The figures, the forms, are so soft, so sweet, their outlines almost indistinguishable from the space within which we (customarily) assume they are set. Conversely the atmosphere itself appears to be saturated with 'somethingness'. It is not empty, vacant space, but is alive, vibrating, thick with the essence of the All. That's what I had seen, anyway. It would be folly not to check it out first hand.

 

Part Three 

There are three types of energy housed and emanated by the churches and cathedrals of Europe. There is good energy, so-so energy, and bad energy. The last of the three predominates, which is hardly surprising given the religion's preoccupations with sinfulness, unworthiness, and a 'loving' yet curiously vicious and barbaric god. The homes of good energy are relatively rare, but they do exist. The places where something truly beautiful, transcendent we may say, manages to break through the repressive barrier of conventional religiosity.

The Frari seemed to house an overall positive energy; it was a pleasure to spend time there, and I had a sense that an afternoon within its walls had the potential of being a therapeutic experience. In every church that my wife and I entered we did the good energy/so-so energy/ bad energy test. And in each case our feelings were identical.

I opened the door to San Zaccaria tentatively, anticipating what may lie inside. We stepped into the main body of the church, and it hit immediately: bad energy.

San Zaccaria conforms much more to the stereotype of the Catholic Mediterranean place of worship. It was dark inside, and not just in terms of visible light. 'Confess and repent you good-for-nothing bag of flesh' resounded all around, bouncing off the walls. OK, where's Bellini?

Looming vaguely out of the thick grey murk I could just make out the outlines of that familiar masterpiece. It was one of those paintings that you can light up by putting some coins inside a little machine. Since everything was almost pitch black, I crammed most of my spare change into the slot and beheld.

The painting is magnificent, for sure, but even with the illumination I failed to catch the magic and mystical dimension that radiated in the books, or for that matter even on my laptop. Bellini's colours and his unique portrayal of Totality were unable to penetrate the dense air of negative religiosity which pervaded San Zaccaria. We left and went for coffee..... 

 

Part Four 

And so to Castelfranco. It was the final full day of the trip, and I was set on undertaking a local and offbeat pilgrimage.

Italy probably doesn't do sleepy little market towns, but if it did, Castelfranco del Veneto would be top of the list. This is especially so between 2 o'clock and 3.30 in the afternoon, when empty, almost silent streets bear witness to a near-universal uptake of the national siesta.

Castelfranco has not always been so sleepy. The impressive and well-preserved ramparts surrounding the ancient town centre testify to less peaceful days in the past. Treviso, Padova, and Venice all vied for proprietary rights to the town during the 13th and 14th centuries. 

It is a pleasant town indeed; but the main purpose of the visit to Castelfranco is that it is on the list of must-breathe-ins for the serious pilgrim of Venetian art. It is the birthplace of Giorgione, and home to some of his earliest known works.

First up is the Casa Giorgione, the House of Giorgione. Actually, he doesn't seem to have lived there, but encircling the spacious interior of the upper floor is a frieze painted by him.

Casa Giorgione is a rather beautifully presented and informative little museum about Giorgione and the life of Castelfranco around that time. The frieze itself is a rather bizarre sight, full of globes, musical instruments, measuring devices, suns, moons, eclipses, and other stuff. Without a bit of research it appears random and pointless.

It was commissioned by the owner of the house at the time to decorate what we might nowadays call his study, where he retreated to quiet, and to contemplation of cosmology, philosophy, metaphysics, and the arts. Noble pursuits.

Like much else of the life and works of Giorgione, the frieze remains a bit of a mystery. However, these are hardly likely to be sketches made on a whim or as a bit of random fancy, that's for sure.

The information sheets at the museum suggest a serious subtext to the matter. "..... the Frieze hides.... a message much more unsettling and connected to the historical events and to the culture of the time. The Frieze, in fact, testifies the close link between the unknown who commissioned the work, Giorgione, and the astrological - astronomical theories..... Specifically...... the deep anxiety that crossed contemporaries of Giorgione, caused by the inauspicious astral conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars in Cancer.... between 1503 and 1504, followed by much feared total eclipse of the moon.... and it did fear the end of a golden age for the civilisation."

How much did some of the artists of the Italian Renaissance know of mystical and occult knowledge? Another question very difficult to answer. But even a mild immersion in the works of Giorgione leads me to strongly suspect that he was familiar with plenty of material of an esoteric nature.

 

Part Five

The Duomo, or cathedral, lies more-or-less next door to the Casa Giorgione. Medium frequency energy. And Giorgione's altarpiece is not immediately apparent: it is to be found in a side chapel to the right of the main body of the building.

I rake around for more coins for illumination. At first sight we've just got another Renaissance Madonna with baby, and a couple of saints in attendance, all organised in typical symmetry. It's all getting a bit tedious, isn't it?

Spend any time in the company of the Castelfranco altarpiece, however, and distinct phenomena begin to become apparent.

The entire painting radiates sweet melancholy, of a type absent elsewhere. This is coupled with a profound peacefulness, a combination unique to Giorgione, I suggest.

And behind the superficially orthodox organisation lies a certain weirdness. The Madonna sits high up, on a plane above and beyond that of the saints below. There is no obvious communication between the participants in the painting whatsoever. Each gazes out into empty space, or into a vision that they alone are aware of. Lost in a dream, either personal or universal, or both. It is all inner and inward. Psychological more than theological.

Behind the Madonna the scenes opens into landscape, spacious countryside, of the kind typical of the Veneto. A half-ruined building and two tiny figures, possibly in combat, make themselves known vaguely before all dissolves into the haze and the mist. So the scene appears to be, not in a church at all, but more like a theatre set arranged in a dreamlike fantasy world.

You look, you gaze, you scan and you scrutinize. Most likely you feel transported to some place or some realm unknown, and give up all attempt at 'understanding'. The painting washes over you, touching and feeding your soul, whatever that may be.

We head silently towards the exit door. Outside it has started to rain....   

 

And More... 

In his book 'A Concise History of Venetian Painting' John Steer writes with eloquence and feeling about the Bellini and Giorgione altarpieces. He makes the points better than maybe I have been able to.

Rather than including them in the main body of the blog piece, I include a few extracts here, for further elucidation.

In the Zaccaria Altarpiece ".... all distinctions are abolished and the atmosphere becomes as dense as the figures. The forms in the painting are fused together into a warm golden harmony and, although the content of such a painting cannot be verbally defined, it is difficult not to feel that what we have here is not an orthodox faith in the creation as a reflection of the Creator, but an almost pantheistic intuition of the unity of all things in which matter and spirit become one."

And, in a comparison with Giorgione: "In Bellini's painting (Zaccaria), the figures are grouped within an apse, the curve of which brings the eye back to the surface. The whole work is internally balanced..... and has that inner harmony which is the chief quality of the best Quattrocento and High Renaissance art. In Giorgione's painting there is no such inner order, and his manner of composition is different from that of even his greatest contemporaries. 

"In the Castelfranco altarpiece the forms are not brought back to the surface, but are simply cut at the sides, so that they suggest the infinity of space extending outside the frame. The space of the picture ceases to be self-contained, and becomes a part of a greater whole..... The figures now seem almost threatened by an environment which is no longer made to their measure, and it is for this reason that the picture, for all its sweet peacefulness, has a strange loneliness which is new to Renaissance art."

Some paintings, such as Titian's Assumption and Giorgione's Altarpiece, require that you go back time and time again to their company. Find some good reproductions, visit them regularly - every day is great - even for a minute or two. Do it for several weeks or months. The paintings reveal more secrets the longer you spend with them.....   

 

Images: Madonna and Child by Filippo Lippi; Pesaro Madonna, Titian; Square of San Marco, Venice, April 2024; Zaccaria Altarpiece, Giovanni Bellini; Castelfranco, April 2024; Castelfranco Altarpiece, Giorgione