This Discussion of Titian's Sacred and Profane Love Is One of Many
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Titian's Sacred and Profane Love Re-examined Author(s): Eugene B. Cantelupe Source: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 46, No. 2 (Jun., 1964), pp. 218-227 Published by: College Art Association This discussion of Titian's Sacred and Profane Love is one of many. Walter Friedlaender and Erwin Panofsky wrote extensively on the subject in 1938 and 1939 and much was brought up to date by Malcolm Bull and others in the present century. Eugene Cantelupe provides a cogent analysis of Titian's painting, but it is worth noting that at the time of his writing it was not known that the painting was commissioned for the marriage of Nicolò Aurelio, the Venetian Grand Chancellor, to a young widow, Laura Bagarotto. Irrespective of this, the elaborate details in his article are well worth attending to. (AF) 218 THE ART BULLETIN istic of militaryfortifications built by LucianoLaurana Laurana,the most importantarchitect involved in the and Francescodi Giorgio. project,is documentedonly from 1476 untilhis death A majoredifice built in Pesaroduring the decadeof in 1479.14Giovanni may well have had accessto the the seventies,Costanzo's Nuova Roccaor, as it is now same sourceused by the designerof the medal. We known, Fortezza Costanzo, answers the description can say with certainty,then, that Giovanni'saltarpiece of S. Terenzio'smodel. Although only the foundation was paintedin 1475 or after. of the original buildingremains, the model can be Most recent scholarshave tended to assign the seen to conformto the outline of the massivelypro- Coronation of the Virgin to an earlier date, roughly portionedcorner towers.9 In addition, the sloping 1470-1473,"1which is to say, several years before foundationsof the modelcorrespond to the present-day Antonello da Messina's altar for the church of San ruins, where the sides are much thicker below the Cassiano (documented 1475-1476). A post-I475 stringcoursewhich encirclesthe building. datingof the altarpieceat Pesaroconsiderably changes The most conclusiveevidence for the identification our view of Venetianpainting during the seventies, of S. Terenzio'smodel is the elevationof the fortress especiallywith regardto Giovanni'sdebt to Antonello. on the reverseof one of Costanzo'smedals (Fig. 4), As Giles Robertsonhas observed,"the Vasariantradi- an example of which is preservedin the National tion that he learnt from Antonello to paint in oils, Gallery of Art in Washington.xoThe coin portrays inaccurateas it may be in all its details,gives us the the fortressfrom a level high enough to show the essentialanswer. In such works as the Rimini Pieta and relationshipbetween the four corner towers and the the Santa Giustina we see him modifying the sharp central tower. According to Adolfo Venturi, the hatchedmodelling of his earlierperiod . to achieve fortressoriginally consisted of "four massivebattle- a more continuousmodelling of form; and in the mentedtowers at the cornersof the mainescarpment; Coronation of the Virgin at Pesaro we see this fully from the escarpmenta drawbridgeled to the central achievedby some differentmeans, includingthe use section, from which arose the keep which dominated of glazes. The Antonellesquecharacter of the model- the Adriatic.""' ling of the Pesaropicture seems to me self-evident... On the basisof the identificationof the Fortezza and there is no externalevidence to suggestit was in Costanzoin the Pesaroaltarpiece, we may assumethat fact executed before Antonello's visit."16 Giovanniexecuted the paintingeither for Costanzo While we hope that the discoveriescommunicated Sforzaor for a patronwho wantedthe Fortezzarepre- in this note will substantiateRobertson's findings, we sented as a tributeto Costanzo.Situated on a bluff must emphasize in conclusion that a positive terminus overlookingthe Foglia River, the new buildingwas post for the Pesaroaltarpiece is only a firststep toward probablya conspicuousfeature of the city when Gio- an accurate assessmentof Giovanni Bellini's early vanni arrived there during the seventies. Little is development. known about Costanzo's art patronage; however, since Costanzowas the brother-in-lawof Federigoda [HARVARD UNIVERSITY] Montefeltro,his role as a significantpatron seems plausible. Throughthe identificationof the FortezzaCostanzo, TITIAN'S SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE we are able to arrive at a terminus post for the altar- RE-EXAMINED Construction of the fortress on piece. began June 3, EUGENE B. CANTELUPE 1474.12 A year later, Costanzo had the commemora- tive medal made.1" Consequently, the likeness of the If Titian's Borghesepainting is not the most enig- fortress was known in 1475 (evidently through matic of Italian High Renaissancepictures, certainly architectural plans), although the activity of Luciano it is one of the most disputed.For more than forty 9. For a reproduction of the Rocchetta as it stands today, the fortress. see Vaccaj, op.cit., p. 68. 12. Annibale Olivieri-Giordani, Lettera sopra un medaglione non ancor osservato Costanzo di io. The medal, catalogued as No. A 834 of the Kress di Sforza Pesaro, Pesaro, 1781, collection of Renaissance bronzes, was formerly in the Dreyfus p. vii. See also Pompeo Litta, Famiglie celebri italiane, 1819, collection (cf. George Francis Hill, Renaissance Medals: The I (unpaginated; plate entitled "Cenni sulle Medaglie Gustave Dreyfus Collection, Oxford, 1931, No. 97). al ramo di Pesaro"). The on the medal reads INEXPVGNABILE ii. Venturi, op.cit., vii, i, p. 675. At the same time we 13. inscription should note that the model held by S. Terenzio differs in cer- CASTELLVM CONSTANTIVM PISAVRENZI SALVTI tain ways from the fortress portrayed on the coin. For in- PVBLICAE MCCCCLXXV. stance, in the painting the central keep has a broad, sloping 14. Arduino Colasanti, Luciano Laurana, Rome, 1922, p. 8. roof, whereas on the coin it is much steeper. Also the pro- 15. Roberto Longhi, "The Giovanni Bellini Exhibition," portions of the central keep are dissimilar in the coin and Burlington Magazine, xcI, 1949, p. 281, dates the altar about the model. Although it is difficult to account for these dis- 1473. Luigi Coletti, Pittura veneta del quattrocento, Novara, does Edoardo crepancies, the identification of the model as the Fortezza 1953, p. lxii, accepts Longhi's dating, as Arslan, Costanzo would appear correct nonetheless. I have not dis- "Studi Belliniani," Bolletino d'Arte, XLV'I, 1962, p. 44. covered any other building undertaken in Pesaro, Urbino, or Rodolfo Pallucchini, Giovanni Bellini, Milan, 1959, PP. 57 Rimini that resembles the model so closely. Since construction and 137, places the execution of the altar about 1470-1471. of the Fortezza was still in progress during the 148o's, it is x6. Robertson, op.cit., p. 58. conceivable that the painting shows an alternate project for This content downloaded from 78.33.29.102 on Mon, 01 Feb 2016 18:58:34 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions / -- 2?u / ip~; / i. Titan, Sacred and Profane Love. Rome, Borghese Gallery (photo: Alinari) ;?;??-:?1~ ii, Bpe~i IP 2:~ _1 :;eSti?t i~ ~ -:?::,ad,$ 1 ?/ / *A " i I ~I.AkPa_ 4 iui L- ; I" • " ? 4 ~ ~ ~ ri "-'i'6~ 2. Clothed woman on left (detail of Fig. i). Rome, Borghese Gallery 3. Unclothed woman on right (detail of Fig. I). Rome, (photo: Alinari) Borghese Gallery (photo: Alinari) This content downloaded from 78.33.29.102 on Mon, 01 Feb 2016 18:58:34 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions NOTES 219 years this work has commanded critical attention, but Love may be categorized as literary, philosophical,and the considerablebody of scholarlywriting it has inspired allegorical, and begin in 1917, when Louis Hourticq is inconclusive, most critics admitting that they cannot indicated a literary source for the painting's iconog- account for all of the details in the painting. raphy-?Fra Francesco Colonna's popular romance, When one first sees Sacred and Profane Love, he Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, first published in Venice senses neither obliquity nor mystery, rather directness by Aldus Manutius in 1499 in an edition famous for its and clarity (Fig. i). Two women, seated at a sculp- woodcuts.' tured fountain, clearly define a series of opposites.The Hourticq's hypothesis, which accounted for few of figure on the left, elaborately gowned, sits at a lower the painting'smany details, was disregardeduntil 1938, elevation than the semidraped one on the right. The when Walter Friedlaender suggested that Titian, clothed woman leans on a closed urn, while the utilizing Colonna's text and its woodcut illustrations, unclothed one extends an open urn. Moreover, these pictured the crucial rite of the "tintura delle rose" as protagonists,separated by Cupid behind and a rosebush performed by Cupid at a fountain supporting, on the in front of the fountain, lead the eye of the beholder right and the left, Venus and Polia, the two heroines of into two contrasting backgrounds. The left one is a the novel.2 cityscape, dark and crowded (Fig. 4); the right is a In I943, Rachel Wischnitzer-Bernstein, affirming pastoral landscape, bright and spacious (Fig. 5). Friedlaender'sut pictura poesisinterpretation, attempted Further scrutiny reveals similarities that link the to corroborate his tentative identification of Polia by contrasting halves of the canvas and the landscapes explaining the sculptured scene beside her as an "alle- with the foreground. The women so closely resemble gory of assailed virginity."' But Friedlaender im- each other that they seem sisters, perhaps twins; and mediately objected to the addition by Mrs. Bernstein of their vases are alike in shape and texture. In addition, an allegorical interpretationto his purely literary one, horses and riders appear in both landscapes and in the and expressed doubt that the sculptured horse, which relief sculpture on the fountain. The viewer soon the scene features, symbolizesvirginity.' realizes that Titian has harmonized the contrasts Chief spokesmanfor a philosophicalinterpretation is between the protagonists-and between their peculiar Erwin Panofsky; in 1930, he identified the two lovely milieux-within the fundamental dichotomy of the women as Ficino's Twin Venuses, who personify composition.