Every time I see Caravaggio's Raising of Lazarus (1609) again in Messina, Sicily - such as just this week in the middle of June - new evidence of his genius appears from this late canvas. Many of these observations I've published in a recent book (Hunt, 2004:125 ), but although noticed before and mentioned in lectures at Stanford and elsewhere, the confirmation of such ideas usually comes from repeated direct reflection many times in front of the canvas after one's eyes adjust to the tenebrism of his dark style palpably employed here. Indeed, the passage of John 11:1-43 even refers to this miracle of the raising of Lazarus in the context of light versus darkness (John 11:9), which seems not to have been lost on Caravaggio.

Exemplary prior studies have long discussed Caravaggio's treatment of Lazarus as commissioned by the Genoese merchant Giovanni Battista de' Lazzari (Caravaggio's likely intended name pun noted) for the Church of the Padri Crociferi or "Cross-Bearing Fathers" in Messina (e.g., Langdon, 1998:370-3), often commenting on Lazarus's crosslike pose as an allusion to the "Cross-Bearing Fathers" and some have also long commented on Caravaggio's allusion to Michelangelo's creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel with life returning to Lazarus's hand from the command of Christ while the rest of his body is still in the sleep of death. But several possibly new observations can be suggested here as well as to develop further or respond to others' ideas.

First, the contrasting light and darkness on the hand of Lazarus also reminds one of the famous passage in Genesis 1:3 when God says "Let there be light". That God (in Christ) may also divide the light from the darkness here is possibly alluded by opposition: divine light returns warm life to Lazarus where the cold dark side of his hand is still in absolute shadow and death and the side facing Christ is in light and returning to life. Caravaggio's chiaroscuro is nowhere so dramatic as in this gesture of a dead hand responding to Christ's verbal command to move again. If God is light - Caravaggio's artistic manifest - and also life, Lazarus will rise again starting from this hand in its dual state of light and darkness.

Second, also in parallel with the darkness of Christ's face hidden in like shadow on the left - also suggestive of his yet hidden deity both before and after his Transfiguration - the body of Lazarus is held almost tenderly by his sisters Mary and Martha on the far right (his family members can endure the smell of corruption of his flesh only because of their great grief and loss). But when the lungs of Lazarus refill with air in a few seconds after the moment Caravaggio has painted, his sisters will be the first spectators to notice his breath, their faces being so close to his face about to be reanimated by this resurrection.

Third, the depth and intensity of the darkness of those holding Lazarus is finally enlightened when one studies the painting for a long time in its Messina context and one's eyes dilate to the proper level. With all due respect, John Spike - hugely authoritative - reports that the person often believed to be a self-portrait of Caravaggio is the man above Christ's pointing hand and facing Christ with praying hands, although Spike is clearly not endorsing this view (Spike, 2001: 221). Puglisi, for example, in her magisterial book supports this identification for a self-portrait (Puglisi, 1998: 327). In my opinion, however, this man is not nearly as interesting a candidate for a self-portrait as another candidate suggested below, nor does the bearded resemblance of this candidate seem as compelling as another. Furthermore, my strongest concern about the identification of the praying man as a Caravaggio self-portrait is that it seems to push piety for this rebellious artist a little too far, especially since the artist refused holy water to absolve venial sin in the Messina church of the Madonna del Pilero, as Sussino related, purportedly saying, "I don't need it because all my sins are mortal" (Hunt, 2004, 128).

On the other hand, the person who holds Lazarus's torso is usually forgotten because there is more light on the spectators around Jesus and also on Mary and Martha at either end of the canvas. If one looks very closely at this individual holding Lazarus in the middle of his body (and he is also in the darkest center of the painting), his bearded face is almost entirely in shadow yet fascinatingly lit by the light reflected off Lazarus. He is also in subtle opposition to the more easily recognizable Jesus and the sisters of Lazarus. Given Caravaggio's other self-portraits, this visage is so similar to the face of Caravaggio (equally possible given Puglisi's hallmarks "short dark hair, low forehead, beard and moustache") that it is very plausible as the painter himself in some puzzling act either akin to vicarious faith or at least a voyeur of death. Paranoid and sleeping with a dagger under his pillow at this time in Messina, as his local Sicilian chronicler Susinno relates in 1724, Caravaggio is all too aware of his own mortality.

This painting does not need to in any way suggest an intended point on the continuum of faith (however feeble or strong) or be interpreted as redemptive by its artist who is a fugitive for murder and with a death sentence all too real, but it is nonetheless a mystery about faith where Caravaggio seems to place himself in the middle of a desperately-neeeded miracle.

Notes

F. Susinno. Le vite de' pittore messinesi, 1724. Florence: V. Martinelli, ed. (1966).

Helen Langdon. Caravaggio: A Life. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1998, 370-3 & 376.

Catherine Puglisi. Caravaggio. London: Phaidon, 1998, 327.

John Spike. Caravaggio. New York: Abbeville, 2001, 221.

Patrick Hunt. Caravaggio. Life and Times Series. London: Haus Publishing, 2004, 125, 128.

John Varriano. Caravaggio: The Art of Realism. Pennsylvania State University, 2006.

copyright © 2007 Patrick Hunt
Stanford University

http://www.patrickhunt.net
phunt@stanford.edu

Bartolomeo Montagna’s nearly forgotten contribution to Renaissance Painting of the Veneto merits revisiting through a brief examination of the controversial Monte di Pietà as related to an altarpiece he painted for the Franciscan Church of San Marco in Lonigo, near Vicenza, Montagna attained status of celebrated painter in Venice after he received his first public commission in 1482. By 1485 Montagna’s altarpiece production thrived in Vicenza, Padua, Verona and throughout the Veneto, which made him an industrious and recognized painter by 1500. Here The Virgin and Child Enthroned with Sts. Francis and Homobonus, Bernardino da Feltre and Beggar, circa 1512, tempera on canvas, now in the Berlin, Gemäldegalerie shall be given primary focus with respect to the influence of Bernardino da Feltre.

Bernardino da Feltre, the Monte di Pietà and Vicenza

The figures of Blessed Bernardino da Feltre, who was never canonized, and St. Homobonus (1) were employed with some frequency in Northern Italy, though Homobonus less so than Bernardino. The presence of Bernardino da Feltre may appear innocuous as a Franciscan advocate of charity upon first glance; however, the beholder should consider that he became one of the most passionate Franciscan preachers from the 1470-90s. The effects of his fervent preaching against Jewish money-lending, especially in Mantua, Cremona, Pavia, Padua, Treviso, Vicenza and throughout northern and central Italy, inspired the flourishing of Monti di Pietà, or Christian money-lending establishments. The Monti di Pietà provided a Franciscan alternative in an attempt to interrupt the loan businesses of Jewish lenders, and Bernardino da Feltre advocated donations for the Monti di Pietà as a step toward salvation. (2) As Bernardino preached from town to town, funds poured into the local Monti di Pietà. Vicenza was no exception, and Bernardino gave sermons on numerous occasions in 1493 and 1494 at the request of its citizens. He preached as many as ninety sermons at Vicenza’s cathedral. (3) Nearby Lonigo is registered as having had a Monte di Pietà by the time of the Pope Leo X (1513-1522). Ultimately, the Monte di Pietà was not so much a charitable alternative to usury, but in point of fact, according to Franciscan scholar Vittorino Meneghin, it developed into another lending/earning establishment. (4) It is relevant that Bernardino da Feltre was the son of a wealthy noble notary, and therefore wise to finance; often arguing in support of the Monti di Pietà charging an interest rate to support its administration. Thus, the distinction between the two established loan systems becomes blurred. In the literature, it is fascinating to observe that the motives of Bernardino da Feltre are historicized differently. In one camp, Bernardino da Feltre is seen as preaching fervidly about the Monte di Pietà and its connection to Christian salvation. (5) In the other, scholars have argued that Bernardino preached only in towns with significantly populated Jewish communities with the objective of one, dispersing the Jewish community, and two, destroying their businesses. (6) In one particular case, Bernardino preached in Trent on Easter just before nine Jews were arrested, accused of the murder of a boy named Simon, and tormented until they confessed. As a late fifteenth-century depiction shows, the local Jews were charged - typically falsely - with having tortured and killed the two and half year-old Simon in order to use his blood for making Passover matzo. (7) Regrettably, the practice of charging Jews with ritual murder created an epidemic of similar cases in Northern Italy and Austria. (8) After Bernardino’s death in 1494, the Monti di Pietà continued to thrive; however, the War of the League of Cambrai, 1508-1517, in addition to the growing population in the Veneto, had disastrous effects and put the Franciscan institution in peril. (9)

In looking to fifteenth-century images of Bernardino da Feltre including Montagna’s, one finds that they are not extremely common. According to Meneghin’s survey of Bernardino da Feltre’s iconography, the incidence of Bernardino’s portraits from the late fifteenth century typically correspond to where he gave sermons and established Monti di Pietà throughout the Veneto, Umbria, and Emilia Romagna. (10) A number of visual examples present a window into the depth of Bernardino’s effectual nature as a speaker, a proponent of the Monte di Pietà and Franciscanism in the Veneto and beyond. As was the case in Vicenza, Bernardino gave sermons on a variety of occasions in Faenza, as this canvas was to commemorate his memorable orations.

The portrait shows Bernardino dressed as a Franciscan, hooded with presumably golden rays that issue from his head, a standard iconographical feature indicating the image postdates his life. Meanwhile, a donor is portrayed kneeling in the left lower corner. Bernardino holds a cartouche in his left hand with the maxim written, “Diligere Mundum,” which refers to the First Epistle of John’s “Do not love things of this world (2:15)”, and a clear allusion to the steps taken towards salvation. These same features are seen in another painting of Bernardino by an unknown Ferrarese painter, dated to 1507. Bernardino holds the typical sign for the Monte di Pietà, a mound topped with a standard flying the flag of the Resurrection, which bears an image invoking pathos: Christ, Man of Sorrows. Usually the emblem of the Monte di Pietà also contains the words “Curam illius habe,” or “Give them to the Host,” allusive to the request for charity as seen in the Umbrian example painted by Giovanni di Pietro, otherwise known as “Lo Spagna” The Veronese painter Paolo Morando, called Cavazzola, painted a profile portrait intended as one of a cycle of paintings for a chapel in the Church of San Bernardino in Verona. Here Bernardino gestures as if in the act of sermonizing. Filippo Mazzola, father of the famous Parmigianino, painted a half-length sacra conversazione with Bernardino da Feltre in Parma. While the original context of this oil on panel is uncertain, it is known that Bernardino gave sermons in Parma between 1485 and 1492. Thus, the possibility remains that Mazzola himself might have had contact with the Franciscan missionary. Here Bernardino’s physiognomy is very similar to the features seen in Lo Spagna’s portrait, taking into account the round bulbous eyes and mustache, though the symbol of the Monte di Pietà is an abbreviated Man of Sorrows. Because in many instances the paintings of Bernardino da Feltre were intended as ex-votos honoring his sermons, I pose the following question: Where does Montagna’s sacra conversazione, incorporating Bernardino da Feltre, fit into this tradition? Undoubtedly, the presence of this figure forces us to observe this understudied work in a new light.

State of Conservation

In Montagna’s San Marco altarpiece, the beggar, pendant figure to Bernardino, appears original, as is the miniature figure of St. Catherine of Alexandria. The apparent diminished size of Bernardino is curious, though interesting to note that according to his biographies, he was apparently diminutive in stature. The Bishop of Padua was recorded as having called him, affectionately, “piccolino,” or “parvulo.” (11)

As a part of the recent technical investigation conducted by the Berlin Gemäldegalerie in 2004, the x-ray assemblage reveals that Bernardino da Feltre was likely added later, due to the fact that the figure is extremely light in intensity, almost invisible compared to the other figures in the painting. (12) Further examination reveals that the podium and socle were finished before Bernardino was added, thus he is most likely not a part of the originally planned painting. The letters “M.D.” on the throne base likely refer to Mater Dei, given the titular dedication to the Immaculate Conception. The Church of San Marco was re-consecrated and three additional altars were built on June 3, 1512. (13) Given the evidence of Montagna’s stylistic maturity observed in this work, such as his interest in saturated tones, movement of human form and the blurring of hard contours, it seems probable that Montagna would have produced this altarpiece for the new structure, and thus a date of 1500 for Montagna’s painting is premature. Vicentine Church historian, Francesco Barbarano, gives an account of San Marco’s six altars and describes them as they appeared in the mid-eighteenth century. According to Barbarano, the confraternities of Lonigo maintained these six altars, though Barbarano does not specify patrons to altars. (14)

By 1512 Vicenza and its provincial territory, including Lonigo, had long since restored its allegiance to the Venetian Republic, yet the war of the League of Cambrai persisted. It is known that the Monte di Pietà in Vicenza was affected adversely during these years. If the loan establishment in urban Vicenza had exhausted its funds in this time of extreme need, then can we assume that there were similar conditions in rural Lonigo during the League of Cambrai years? I suggest here that Montagna finished the altarpiece around 1512 and upon presentation to his patron, a local confraternity in Lonigo, it was decided to augment the composition to include Bernardino da Feltre in the interest of re-awakening his memory and donations given to the local Monte di Pietà. Bernardino’s presence in Lonigo was never documented, however he spoke many times in nearby Vicenza, Padua and Verona. Moreover, as his ex-voto portraiture tradition suggests, imagery of Bernardino da Feltre is strictly connected to commemorating his sermons, thus the appeal for donations.
Regrettably, the specifics of Bartolomeo Montagna’s commission remain obscured by the lack of archival information, as none of the convent’s inventories mention the painting. The San Marco in Lonigo altarpiece thus stands as a cultural marker of Franciscan rhetoric: promoting propaganda against Jewish money lending practices, and endorsement for the use of Monti di Pietà reflects Vicentine local piety.

NOTES:

(1) George Kaftal, Saints in Italian Art: Iconography of the Saints in the Paintings of North East Italy. Florence: Sansoni, 1978, 425. In North Eastern Italy, Kaftal cites only two others in addition to Montagna, one in the Basilica San Marco and another by Domenico da Tolmezzo (1479) in Udine at the Museo Civico.

(2) Renata Segre, “Bernardino da Feltre: I Monti di Pietà e I Banchi Ebraici,” Rivista storia italiana, vol. 90, Issue 4, (1978): 888.

(3) Vittorino Meneghin, Bernardino da Feltre e I Monti di Pietà (Vicenza: 1974), 393-5.

(4) Ibid.

(5) Meneghin, 388-90.

(6) Segre, 825. For example, oddly Bernardino da Feltre never preached sermons in his native Feltre. Monte di Pietà was founded as late as 1542.

(7) Dana E. Katz, “The Contours of Tolerance: Jews and the Corpus Domini Altarpiece in Urbino,” The Art Bulletin 55 4 (December 2003): 652.

(8) Leon Poliakov, The History of Anti-Semitism (New York, Shocken Books, 1965), 148. Here is an exerpt from the Franciscan preacher’s sermon at Trento, “Jewish usurers bleed the poor to death and grow fat on their substance, and I who live on alms, who feed on the bread of the poor, shall I then be mute as a dog before outraged charity? Dogs bark to protect those who feed them, and I, whom am fed by the poor, shall I see them robbed of what belongs to them and keep silent? Dogs bark for their masters; shall I not bark for Christ?” Furthermore, the site of Simon’s execution later became a pilgrimage site.

(9) Meneghin, 401-2.

(10) See Meneghin, Iconografia del B. Bernardino Tomitano da Feltre. Venice: San Michele in Isola, 1967.

(11) Meneghin, (1967), 11. Bernardino Guslino da Feltre was his earliest biographer in 1696 and Simone da Marostica in 1871.

(12) See Elizabeth Carroll. “La Pala Ritrovata: Una rivisitazione della Pala d’Altare di
Bartolomeo Montagna, già nella Chiesa di San Marco a Lonigo.” Arte Documento 20 (2004):112-117.

(13) Pomello, 68. Cites the documentation as, “…si legge nei atti di Pietro Giovanni da Schio.”

(14) Francesco Barbarano de Mironi, Historia Ecclesiastica della Città, Territorio e Diocesi di Vicenza 1649-1762, Vicenza: Carlo Bressan, 1761., vol. VI, 48

Images courtesy of Berlin Gemaldegalerie and Vittorino Meneghin

copyright 2007

Elizabeth Carroll Consavari, Ph.D.
Department of Art and Art History
Stanford University

The capture of Pirisabora represented the first major victory for Julian's Persian expedition in A.D. 363. Ammianus Marcellinus, Zosimus, and Libanius all discuss the siege and the subsequent setback the Romans suffered the next day, when three squadrons of scouts were routed and a standard lost. Putting all three accounts together reveals substantial omissions in Ammianus' account which suggest the historian purposefully distorted his account to minimize the damage to the reputation of his hero, Julian.

On the second day of the siege of Pirisabora, Julian himself led an attack against one of the gates of the city but was repelled. He then ordered a helepolis “city-taker” siege engine to be built, the mere sight of which convinced the defenders to surrender under lenient terms of peace (24.2.18-22). Ammianus reports that the soldiers found a large stockpile of grain and weaponry in the citadel, since the city had been evacuated and 2500 men left behind to defend it from the Romans (24.2.22). Of this, the soldiers took what they needed and burnt the remainder as well as the city.

Ammianus’ chronology at this point becomes murky: he next recounts the loss of a standard by a reconnaissance force and the punishment of the men involved postera die “on day following” (24.3.1), and then he relates Julian’s speech which occurred incensa denique urbe, ut memoratum est “after the burning of the city, as I have said” (24.3.3). The reader is left to ask whether the loss of the standard (and punishment of the soldiers) occurred before or after the speech?

Ammianus seems to say that on the same day as the capture of the city, the citadel was found full of goods, the city burned, and Julian’s speech given. The following day, then, the reconnaissance force lost their standard, Julian routed the enemy, and punished the soldiers who had lost the standard. This interpretation means that Ammianus has reported the events of 24.3.1-2 out of sequence, jumping forward to the day after the city was captured and then jumping back to the day of the capture to relate Julian’s speech. Based on just the information he gives, this certainly is a possible interpretation of the sequence of events (1), but when Zosimus’ account is considered it becomes less plausible.

On the siege itself, Ammianus and Zosimus agree, but Zosimus gives much more detail following the city’s surrender. First, he says that in addition to grain and weapons, abundance τῆς ἄλλης ἀποσκευῆς “of other household stuff” was also found (3.18.5). He states that of the large amount of grain found, most was loaded onto ships and the rest split between the men. Of the weapons, the arms useful for Roman battle tactics were distributed to the men and the rest burned or thrown into the river (3.18.5-6). Zosimus' account makes good sense, but accepting it means that Ammianus’ sequence of events become awfully crowded for the day of the capture of Pirisabora: the troops had to have tried to attack the city in the morning, built a siege engine, negotiated terms with the inhabitants, found the stockpile, carried off most (if not all) of the grain and loaded it on the supply ships, burned the city, and then heard Julian’s speech.

On the other hand, the note that Julian’s speech occurred incensa denique urbe “after the city had been burned” does not necessarily place the Julian’s speech immediately before the loss of the standard by the scouts. Two alternatives are possible: either the first notice that the city was burned looks forward to the next day (having been dislocated to round out the climax of the seige in 24.2), or the second notice acts to remind the reader of the situation (the successful capture of an important city and the reason for the donative) and not act as a temporal marker. Indeed, Williams accepts without question that the speech occurred after the punishment of the soldiers (2). Zosimus’ version does not clearly put the loss of the standard either before or after Julian’s speech: while he narrates the speech before defeat of the scouts, he does not give any words which can confirm the ordering is chronological and not just topical (3.19.1).

The account of the attack and Julian’s counterattack also present difficulties when compared to Zosimus’ version, which again adds more details.

Postera die, quam haec acta erant, perfertur ad imperatorem cibos per otium capientem nuntius grauis Surenam, Persicum ducem, procursatorum partis nostrae tres turmas inopinum aggressum paucissimos trucidasse, inter quos strato tribuno unum rapuisse uexillum. Statimque concitus ira immani cum armigera manu festinatione ipsa tutissimus peruolauit et grassatoribus foeda consternatione depulsis residuos duo tribunos sacramento soluit ut desides et ignauos; decem uero milites ex his, qui fugerant, exauctoratos capitali addixit supplicio secutus ueteres leges. (Ammianus Marcellinus 24.3.1-2)

On the following day, while the emperor was peacefully taking his dinner, he received the unwelcome news that the Persian commander called the Surena had unexpectedly attacked three squadrons of our scouts. Our casualties had been very slight, but a tribune had been killed and a standard captured. Furiously angry, Julian flew in person to the spot with an armed force—the speed of the operation guaranteed its safety—and completely routed the marauders. The two surviving tribunes were cashiered for cowardice and neglect of duty, and ten men out of those who had run away were discharged and put to death in conformity with the ancient Roman practice. (W. Hamilton, trans., The Later Roman Empire, Penguin 1986)

Den Boeft et al. convincingly argue that though it was not technically a decimation (10 men out of an estimated 1050), Ammianus certainly was well aware of the practice and that he considers this incident to be a form of it (3). They also, though, come to the conclusion that “it is impossible to decide whether Ammianus here approves” of the measure, since they conclude that he chooses neutral language with the words ueteres leges, unlike at 29.5.23 when he “fully agrees with the strong measures taken by Theodosius” and uses the word priscus, expressing “awe and respect” (4). While the words describing the custom of decimation may be neutral, though, Ammianus hints that he does not fully approve: he places emphasis on Julian's rage (which Zosimus 3.19.2 confirms) by using the Vergilian (Aeneid 9.694) phrase concitus ira immani “shaken by frightful rage”, as den Boeft et al. themselves point out (5). In addition, the adversative uero introducing the soldiers' punishment may indicate that, unlike the tribunes' demotion, the execution of the men was not entirely justified in Ammianus' eyes.

More problems lie, however, in what Ammianus fails to report, but which Zosimus gives: the Surena battacked μετὰ δυνάμεως οὐκ ὀλίγης “with not a small force” (3.19.1), that Julian recovered the standard (3.19.2), and that he not only routed the enemy but burned the town from which the attack was launched (3.19.2). For Ammianus to leave these three facts out seems strange, since they would increase the glory of Julian’s lightning-fast counterattack—i.e., he fought a larger force, won back the standard, and captured a city. Why does Ammianus diminish Julian's accomplishment by omitting these facts?

The obvious answer lies in execution of the ten soldiers who lost the standard. Given what Ammianus has told the reader, Julian would seem to have acted harshly but within his rights; he lets the reader assume that the Persian force was not very large (thus the slight losses of the scouts implies cowardice), that the standard was not recovered, and that the counterattack by Julian did not accomplish the impressive act of revenge which it did. While not excusing the three squadrons, Zosimus' information certainly mitigates the culpability of scouts and makes Julian’s punishment seem excessive. In the light of the Persian expedition's ultimate failure, Julian's exection of his own men seems wasteful if not outright deplorable. Ammianus, then, seems to have cleaned up the incident as much as he could in good conscience.

Ammianus next gives the second portion of Julian's speech to the soldiers. He does not report the entire speech, in which he says Julian thanked his troops and promised them 100 pieces of silver (24.3.3). This small sum, though, caused the troops to grow angry, and Julian rebukes them, claiming poverty but offering the spoils of the rich Persian empire (24.3.3-6). Should the troops not wish to obey him, he offers his suicide or abdication (24.3.7); at this, the troops acquiesce and promise to comply, though without the overwhelming response Julian’s speeches usually evoke in Ammianus’ history. Zosimus confirms the sum of the gift, but has no mention of the near mutiny which followed (3.18.6).

That the troops were disappointed by their reward after the capture of Pirisabora is plausible: according to Ammianus, they had received only grain and weapons in addition to the silver promised by Julian. Of the abundance τῆς ἄλλης ἀποσκευῆς “of other household stuff” Zosimus mentions, much of it may have been worthless to an army on the march. Finally, the city Julian captured during his counterattack might also not have provided much plunder, or it may not have been shared with the troops at Pirisabora. When it comes to discontent among Julian's soldiers, though, Ammianus sometimes distorts the situation. When Julian, as Caesar, led his men into the Alps, they ran short of food, prompting near mutiny among troops (17.9.3-5); Ammianus, though, plays down the shortage of food and instead emphasizes their complaint of not receiving their pay, which he blames on Constantius (6). Ammianus may be employing the same tactic in Pirisabora, hiding the source of the men's discontent about the decimation behind the pretext of a small donative.

Libanius' account of the loss of the standards and the punishment describes Julian going among the defeated scouts with only a couple of his bodyguards to exact the punishment in person, making an example τοῖς ἄλλοις ἅπασιν "for all the other soldiers" (Or. 18.229-30). The orator's emphasis on Julian's bravery for going among the troops with only a few bodyguards, combined with the statement that the emperor returned to his tent θαυμαστότερος γεγονώς "having become more admirable" (Or. 18.230), suggests that Julian successfully faced some sort of disturbance as a result of his punishment of the defeated soldiers. Ammianus may have elided not just a speech thanking the soldiers, but one in which Julian ordered the deaths of the ten men as an example against cowardice. Ammianus twice refers to Julian threatening his soldiers with being hamstrung if they straggle (7); Julian may similiarly delivered threats at this occasion, provoking the near mutiny of his soldiers. The offer of 100 pieces of silver may have been Julian's attempt to win back their affections, and his offer of suicide or abdication may, as Williams thinks, have been his trump card which only barely worked, as the weak assent of the troops shows (8).

In reporting the events following the capture of Pirisabora, Ammianus has purposefully distorted his account to minimize the harshness--if not outright abuse--of Julian's command and the subsequent mutiny he nearly provokes. By omitting the recovery of the standards and Julian's capture of a city during his counterattack, Ammianus tries to make Julian's actions seem more reasonable, while his sequencing of events--which is confusing at best--may be intentionally murky to prevent the reader from associating the discontent of the troops with execution of the ten soldiers which most likely occurred just prior. Ammianus, it appears, has done his best to disguise the rapidly deteriorating relationship between the emperor and his men, as well as trying to make the best of a sordid incident which occurred on the heels of Julian's first major victory in Persia.

(1) J. den Boeft, et al., Philological and historical commentary on Ammianus Marcellinus XXIV. Brill, 2002, 69
(2) M. Williams, "Four mutinies: Tacitus' Annales 1.16-30; 1.31-49 and Ammianus Marcellinus Res Gestae 20.4.9-20.5.7; 24.3.1-8," Phoenix 51.1, 1997, p. 68.
(3) J. den Boeft, et al., op. cit., ad loc. 24.3.2
(4) J. den Boeft, et al., ibid.
(5) J. den Boeft, et al., ibid.
(6) 17.9.6-7; T. Elliot, Ammianus Marcellinus and fourth century history. Stevens, 1983, 83
(7) Directly at 23.5.21 and elliptically at 24.1.13
(8) M. Williams, op. cit., 69

"Parfois, un arbre humanise mieux un paysage que ne le ferait un homme." Gibert Cesbron

Man and nature… The story of humanity has been an unending conflict between civilisation and that needing civilising. One is constantly assaulting the other: man with his axes and ploughs, and nature with its tempests and floods. Very rarely has man lived in complete harmony with his surroundings. Until the Renaissance in Western Europe, the kinds of emotions with which man associated nature centred on fear. And yet, over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Western European man nurtured a different sort of relationship with his environment: a connection that was not based on necessity or the desire to tame, but an aesthetic appreciation of the mystery of nature’s wild beauties. Nature became “landscape”, and an artistic genre in its own right.

The rediscovery of ancient Greek and Roman literature after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 revived interest in the animist perspective of the great civilisations of the past. The Greeks believed not only that trees and brooks had spirits but also that natural phenomena could be explained by means of myths. Every element of nature stemmed from divine intervention. Storms, earthquakes, and plagues were physical manifestations of godly anger. Attributing emotions to nature helped man to understand the world around him. This tight understanding bridged a gap between man and nature, which enabled – with a small leap of imagination – the transformation of one matter into the other. Ovid illustrates this bond in his Metamorphosis, a compilation of poetry that had a profound influence on writers and artists of the Renaissance.

The myth that both dramatically and tenderly explores man’s relationship with nature in the Renaissance period is the story of Philemon and Baucis. Philemon and Baucis are an old mortal couple, still deeply in love after decades of marriage. Although they live very humbly, they offer hospitality to Jupiter and Mercury – travelling through the land in disguise – when the people of a nearby town had all turned the gods from their doorsteps. The gods punish the townsfolk by summoning a flood, but reward Philemon and Baucis by granting their wish: to be able to die together at the very same moment. When the old couple dies, they are transformed into trees that grow forever in each other’s embrace. The myth was the inspiration for two important artists of the seventeenth century: the French poet Jean de La Fontaine and the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens.

An analysis of the poem Philémon et Baucis by La Fontaine and the painting Landscape with Philemon and Baucis by Rubens (Fig.1) will illuminate the nature of the relationship between man and landscape. The term “man” encompasses many different bodies: the peasant, the urban-dweller, and for our purposes, even the gods. The works of art invite a comparison between the controlled power of the human body and the savage power of nature. Philemon and Baucis’ metamorphosis into trees unites the two worlds and humanises the landscape. Though, it is possible that the two spheres were not so different to begin with, as we consider the notion of landscape as the mirror of the human being.

I. Landscape and the Peasant

No link between man and nature is as deeply forged as the connection between the peasant and the land he cultivates. In his Court traité du paysage (Short Treaty on Landscape), Alain Roger states that the peasant does not appreciate the beauty of a landscape in an aesthetic capacity, but rather he judges the beauty of a landscape based on its usefulness. “This does not signify that the peasant is bereft of all ties to his country and that he does not feel any attachment towards his land, quite the contrary; but this attachment is all the more powerful because it is symbiotic” . Further in the text, Roger reassesses his idea of the “natural contract” that exists between peasant and landscape, defined as “either death or symbiosis.”

The myth of Philemon and Baucis corresponds to Roger’s theory. Philemon and Baucis live in peace with nature. La Fontaine writes that they “cultivated, without assistance, Their enclosure and their field for two score summers.” This wisdom is rewarded by “a bit of milk, of fruits, and the gifts of Ceres.” The earth is respected and well cared for; therefore, it reciprocates with its fertility. Moreover, the cabin belonging to Philemon and Baucis is described by La Fontaine as narrow and humble. With its broken table and used carpet, is so decrepit that it is practically an extension of nature itself.

In Rubens’ painting, the artist transmits by his use of colours the notion of commensalism between the old couple and nature. While Zeus and Hermes are garbed in vibrant blue and red, Philemon and Baucis’ clothes are coloured in tones nearly indistinguishable from the hues of the countryside. Rubens uses the same greys and browns to paint their clothing and skin as the shades he applies to the waterfalls and trees. Already, during their lifetimes, Philemon and Baucis blended in with nature. This link in life prefigures their bond beyond death.

Meanwhile, the city-dwellers of the nearby burg have lost their contact with the land and consequently, they perish as punishment. Is there a correlation between life in an urban environment and the corruption of its inhabitants? In Ovid’s time, cities were being built around the quintessential city, Rome. The poet would have been able to witness the degeneration of nature and the result of this rupture between men of the countryside and city-dwellers. In his work entitled Philémon et Baucis, author Ernst Jünger says of Ovid, “He was born in the Samnite village of Sulmo, and although he lived in Rome since his earliest youth, it is likely that he always spent a part of the year in his country estates. As always with the Latins, cultivated lands, labours and gardens were more familiar than the woods. The way in which one sowed, cultivated, harvested and consumed the fruit of the land held not the slightest secret from him.”

For Ovid, the myth of Philemon and Baucis might have represented the joy of civilising nature while still cultivating and appreciating the goodness of the earth. The danger lay only in building a civilisation to the detriment of nature. City-dwellers lose their roots, so to speak, and their connection to the land. And since the land is, in animist cosmology, simply a physical manifestation of spirits and gods, we can deduce that the city-dwellers lose a certain part of their faith.

After the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, scholars fled the great city with their manuscripts and knowledge, and Western Europe found itself flooded by the literature and philosophy of Antiquity. Authors of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries began to re-examine ancient literary themes, finding in the old stories material with which they could easily identify. Why did La Fontaine choose the myth of Philemon and Baucis in particular? As in Ovid’s era, large cities were developing in France. Consequently, the abundance of bodies, malnutrition and lack of hygiene contributed to the diseases that raged across Europe. Numerous illnesses, notably the bubonic plague, struck thousands of victims, particularly in overpopulated cities where maladies spread quickly. The punishment delivered upon the townspeople in the myth of Philemon and Baucis would have struck a chord with the public of La Fontaine’s Europe. We can consider the destruction wrought by Jupiter and Mercury as symbolic of the plague, which was also considered a punishment imposed by God: “God, irritated by the sins of an entire population had decided to extract vengeance…” Readers of La Fontaine’s poem might have hoped to be protected from divine retribution in the same way that Philemon and Baucis were spared by the gods. The health of the body depended on the respect that that body showed for its environment.

II. The Power of Men and Gods

In Homer’s Odyssey, the text describes only the voice of the sirens and neglects their entire physical description. This omittance only thickens their elusive and mysterious character. La Fontaine’s poem, however, often alludes to parts of the body in reference to its human and godly protagonists: hearts, front, wrinkles, feet, eyes, eyebrows, hand. Instead of distancing the characters, as Homer does with the sirens, these physical details humanise not only the mortal characters but also the gods. If it looks like a human and walks like a human… Although the gods possess abilities lacking in ordinary men, in art, we represent and thus consider them to be simply glorified humans: powerful undying men.

Fig. 2 Rubens, Self-Portrait with Isabella Brant, 1609

Artists employ many different kinds of visual strategies to depict the importance of a certain figure in relation to others present in a painted scene. For instance, in Rubens’ 1609 Self Portrait with his wife Isabelle Brant, the artist places himself in an elevated position. (Fig. 2) His wife is seated at his side; the top of her hat does not even reach the level of her husband’s nose. In this case, height designates Rubens’ superiority over Isabelle, and establishes in the mind of the observer a certain dynamic in the perception of their marriage.

Fig. 3 Rubens, Henri IV Receiving the Portrait of Marie de Medici

In Landscape with Philemon and Baucis, the most immediate observation is that the figures do not occupy the centre of the painting. The background, which is generally only present in mythological paintings in order to highlight the figures, is the focal point of this particular work. Subverting our expectations of a mythic scene, it seems that the figures are only present in order to justify the artist’s desire to paint a dramatic landscape. Clearly the landscape is the protagonist that plays the biggest role in this moment of the story.

Once we have located the figures, we note that Rubens subtly alludes to a social hierarchy. Jupiter’s head is the most elevated, followed by that of Mercury, Philemon and finally Baucis. (Fig. 3) This is in accordance with the norms of the times: gods must be placed higher than men, and men higher than women. What is surprising, however, is the fact that all four figures are equally tiny when faced with the immensity of nature. Their proximity to each other suggests solidarity between men and gods confronted with the wilderness. Men and gods, beside one another, like equals… Could Rubens have been commenting on the contiguity of human and divine power?

The Renaissance saw the birth of the Humanist movement, which is defined in part by the exaltation of the capacities of man. Man awoke to the realization of being capable of dominating the world. He was, after all, a creation of God, and thus a manifestation of divine inspiration. Mixing old stories with new values, can we say that this new consciousness of power is present in La Fontaine’s poem and Rubens’ painting? Philemon and Baucis do not exert power on their environment: they simply lack the physical strength to do so. Instead of taming the world around them, they are content to coexist. The area in which they do exert a significant force, however, a force that humbles even the gods, is on an emotional level. Philemon and Baucis love each other with an undying passion. Even the gods cannot claim to possess such devotion to marital fidelity. And yet, as beautiful as eternal love is, it is not a characteristic of a Renaissance man or a Humanist. Philemon and Baucis are not embodiments of Humanist ideals. They are not… but someone else is.

In La Fontaine’s poem and in Rubens’ painting, the gods themselves fulfil the role of Renaissance man – and not in the sense of a man with many talents, but rather a man of the Renaissance period coming to terms with his mastery over the world surrounding him. The vocabulary of power pervades the poem: “Jupiter interceded”; “Jupiter granted”; “powerful hand” . Jupiter speaks in the imperative. To the old couple, he orders, “Follow us”. Too mighty to take it upon himself to create a storm, he relegates power to his companion: “Mercury, summon the vapours” . In Rubens’ painting though, Mercury protects the mortals with a comforting hand on Philemon’s shoulder while Jupiter commands the storm with outstretched arm. It is an authoritative gesture.

These gods are clearly very powerful; but what is the nature of their power? The gods are able manipulate nature and effect transformations. Manipulate and transform, but not create. Mercury could transport pre-existing vapours, but he could not to create them. The gods were incapable of creating something out of nothing. Similarly, men of the Renaissance learned to influence their environment and accomplish their desires with the tools that nature provided, but they were not magicians who could create matter in a void. Jupiter, Mercury, and the other gods did not create the world. They inherited it from divinities far more ancient. Similarly, Rubens’ and La Fontaine’s contemporaries did not create the stories they represented in art, but they had recently inherited a vision of the world enlightened by Antiquity. La Fontaine designates the gods by the expression “Masters of the world”, a title that could apply equally well to the sixteenth and seventeenth century intellectual elite.

The power of the gods that men truly lack is the ability to outlast time. For what else is immortality but the possibility to conquer nature and its limitations? The most precious gift the gods may bestow is a share of their immortality. However mortals who actively seek immortality are punished for their presumption. Philemon and Baucis demonstrate humility when they request only the privilege of serving the gods in their temple and dying together. Their prayer is granted beyond their hopes and they are indeed rendered somewhat immortal when they are transformed into trees at their death. But as trees, not as men. As La Fontaine opines at the beginning of his poem, “Fortune sells what we think she gives”. That is to say, no gift of the gods comes without a price. Philemon and Baucis do not conquer nature – to the contrary, the gods oblige them to climb a hill with no consideration for the fact that it is difficult for two elderly people walking with canes to make such a hike. While they could have spared the old couple from the ravages of age by alleviating their aching bodies, the gods proceeded with the attitude “If you can’t beat’em, join ‘em”. Instead of helping Philemon and Baucis rise above nature, they united them to nature forevermore.

III. The Power of Nature

Men have the power of love, and gods have the power to manipulate the physical world. Yet, in the symbolic language of art, we can read in Rubens’ painting that all four figures, both mortal and divine, are small and weak relative to the dominating power of the elements. Their diminutive size connotes the inferiority of mere creatures faced with the enormity of nature. The environment expresses itself in four ways, through water, fire, air and earth. All of these elements are necessary for life, but they can also all be tools of destruction and death. In the myth of Philemon and Baucis, water is the weapon of choice.

Floods play a significant role in creation myths of many religions. The most salient example in western culture is of course the story of Noah’s Ark from the Old Testament. God, saddened and angry at the corruption of man, unleashed a deluge that annihilated all traces of life on land, with the exception of Noah and the animals sheltered in his ark. While the flood caused by Jupiter and Mercury in the myth of Philemon and Baucis was localised, the flood of the Judaeo-Christian tradition covered the entire planet.

Deluges, like storms, hurricanes and tsunamis, are a source of fear and panic. All the technology in the world is powerless to stop the devastating forces of nature. Even nowadays, we are constantly confronted with new examples of technology’s failing faced with disaster. We are reminded of the true weakness of what is considered by many to be humanity’s greatest strength. Sometimes natural disasters such as storms are seasonal and expected, yet they also arrive seemingly at random, surprising locals with their brutality. While the forces of nature have always commanded fear and humility in man, since the Renaissance man has striven not only to subdue nature but also, when complete mastery is not possible, to admire even the monstrous and ferocious side of the world for its savage beauty.

In the same way that children love, in spite of themselves, stories that make them hide under their blankets in fear, men enjoy finding in art the representation of subjects that would ordinarily frighten them were they to experience them in real life. Capturing a terrible scene in a work of art allows it to be admired in a safe and imaginary space. That which is dangerous becomes sublime. “The sublime is not only that which elevates the soul, but it also signifies to the observer its crushing, its annihilation confronted with the spectacle of an incommensurable force.” This quote by C. Legrand refers to the Joseph Vernet painting entitled The Tempest (1777). In L’homme dans le paysage, Alain Corbin also mentions “sublime chaos” in reference to the painting Fire at Sea (1835) by William Turner .

In the myth, Jupiter transforms Philemon and Baucis’ home into a temple with the exploits of the day inscribed on the walls: “All the events were traced on the panel. Far, far from the tableaux of Zeuxis and Apelle! These were traced by an immortal hand.” Jupiter guarantees that neither the force of his anger nor his mercy will be forgotten. By himself immortalising the scene in paint, Rubens echoes Jupiter’s intentions. His landscape painting is a representation made by a mortal hand that recounts the same events that the god wanted to preserve for posterity.

Rubens presents a violent and cruel scene. Uprooted broken trees bear witness to the chaos caused by the storm. The myth involves close ties between men and trees; the battered trees are symbolic of the city-dwellers also cut down by Jupiter’s wrath. Dead human bodies scattered about a landscape painting would not have been tasteful, but in the context of the story, it is a short leap of the imagination from trees to men.

The scene is not without hope. Rubens includes three easily recognizable elements that inspire optimism: the sunlight piercing the clouds, the white bird, and the rainbow. The sun will come out tomorrow… light breaking through heavy clouds is a sign of brighter days, and is often representative of God in Christian art. The white bird is evocative of the Holy Spirit, but also of the dove that brought Noah an olive branch: a sign that it was possible to start life anew on dry land. In the story of Noah’s Ark, the rainbow was God’s gift to mankind, his promise of peace.

IV. The Metamorphosis

Fig. 4 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Winter, 1573

The term “anthropomorphised landscape” designates a humanised countryside. We tend to associate this term with the works of Arcimboldo (Fig.4) or with the Vexierbilder because in these cases the humanisation is conspicuously visible. These kinds of artwork play with optical illusions and are pleasing to the eye in the same way that a pun or a play-on-words amuses the ear. The tradition was widely appreciated in the Renaissance and is maintained today by contemporary artists, such as the Mexican painter Octavio Ocampo.

The kind of anthropomorphisation practised by La Fontaine and Rubens is less visually obvious. Instead of playing with illusions, Rubens directs the observer’s eye in the direction he wishes it to follow in order to transmit a message about the eventual metamorphosis of the figures. Rubens chose to depict the storm scene of the myth; therefore, in keeping with the laws of temporality, he cannot show the transformation of Philemon and Baucis in the same frame. Rubens compresses time already in order to show the entirety of the storm – from its beginnings in the commanding gesture of Jupiter, to its end beneath the rainbow. He cannot show the entire myth occurring in one moment. He can, however, allude to the future. The viewer’s gaze starts at the right on the figures and follows Jupiter’s arm to the left in order to determine what the god is designating with his finger. Following the pathway up to the sky, the gaze is guided by continuity in colour. Gravity pulls the gaze down the path along with the rain, from the clouds to the waterfalls and finally to the rainbow (Fig. 1).

Once the viewer’s eye has traced the pathway drawn by the artist, it returns to the place it started from in order to re-examine the figures: Baucis, Philemon, Mercury and Jupiter. At that instant, it is possible to observe the foreshadowing of the impending metamorphosis. The gaze rises above Philemon and Baucis and perceives two trees intertwined (Fig. 1). These trees are symbolic of the trees that Philemon and Baucis become at the moment of their death. The trees grow beside one another and try to hold each other, even in death, in an embrace: “She became a tree, and extended her arms to him…” says La Fontaine.

Rubens is not unique in wanting to foreshadow the transformation in his artwork. La Fontaine follows suit: images of plants abound in his poem. Philemon says that the adoration of gods is more sincere when idols are sculpted of “simple wood” instead of gold, evoking the authenticity of wood. Philemon and Baucis walk with the help of a cane of reeds. This is reminiscent of the famous enigma posed by the Sphinx, which only Oedipus was able to answer correctly: what walks on four feet in the morning, two feet in the afternoon and three feet in the evening? Philemon and Baucis walk on three feet in the evening of their life. They already belong to the world of trees when they use branches to assist their movements.

In his article entitled “Arborisms in Ovid’s Baucis and Philemon from Metamorphoses”, Dr. Patrick Hunt of Stanford University proposes several hypotheses that explain the reason why Philemon and Baucis turn into oak and linden trees as opposed to other species. The interpretation that best conforms to the archetypal images of old age in La Fontaine’s poem is that the oak and linden both flower in the winter, just as Philemon and Baucis “blossom” in old age. In his poem, La Fontaine uses the metaphor of the seasons: “constant desires, had united their hearts since their sweetest Springtime.” Philemon and Baucis find themselves in a state of grace before the gods in the winter of their lives, just before their deaths. It is appropriate then that they should become trees that flower in winter.

V. The Landscape as Mirror

It is possible to contemplate the landscape as an extension of man after death, as in the case of Philemon and Baucis transformed into trees. However, the landscape is also a mirror of man while he is alive. In La Fontaine’s poem, the following verse links men’s feelings and their surroundings: “O hard people! You open neither your homes nor your hearts!” The home reflects the generosity and warm-heartedness of the individual who possesses it. Philemon and Baucis’ cabin is described in the following manner: “hospitable dwelling, humble and chaste house.” The adjectives describe the qualities of the old couple more than they inform the reader on the appearance of the house. The house is nothing more than a reflection of the personality of its inhabitants.

The artistic link between the representation of nature and the representation of the body is very strong. In the Musée du Louvre’s catalogue for an exhibit on figures in landscapes, we read “The artist, and more precisely the painter, will draw, paint the landscape as he would the face. We see to which extent the interaction, the interference remains important between man and the nature than surrounds him, and how much this dependence will act on the ‘portrait’ that is created of one like of the other.” The myth of Philemon and Baucis does not need to be depicted in a Vexierbilder kind of drawing, for the countryside is already a portrait of the figures. Besides being present in their human form, Philemon and Baucis exist in the trees just as the wrath of the gods is manifested in the cloudy storm.

Conclusion

« Nature is personified, thus may it be understood,” says the review of the Louvre exhibit. Nature is an enigma and its behaviour often mystifies men. Despite their differences, men are able to understand each other. In essence, they feel the same emotions and act according to motivations that are more or less discernable. Nature is not so easily decrypted. However, if we are able to see nature as just another step in the evolution of man’s life, we can understand and justify its peculiarities.

Philemon and Baucis are humans who become part of their landscape. Flesh becomes bark, hair becomes leaves… Man becomes nature. The result of this naturalisation of man is the humanisation of nature. The land becomes an entity with a human soul, thus rendering it more accessible and less frightening. La Fontaine says that that couples would sit in the shadow of oak and linden trees to honour the metamorphosed couple. The human body does not last, but its emotions last as long as the collective memory of those feelings survives. Man achieves immortality then in his communion with nature. And the immortality of the gods? Ironically, it is dependent on human creativity. The gods that facilitated man’s communion with nature in the first place live on only through works of art such as Philemon and Baucis by La Fontaine and Landscape with Philemon and Baucis by Rubens.

Naomi Levin, graduate student at the Sorbonne, Université de Paris IV
levinnao@gmail.com

Bibliography

Corbin, Alain. L’homme dans le paysage. Paris : Éditions Textuel, 2001.

Delumeau, Jean. La Peur en Occident, Une cité assiégée. Paris : Fayard, 1978.

Giraud, Yves. Le Paysage à la Renaissance. Fribourg (Suisse): Éditions Universitaires Fribourg, 1988.

Hunt, Patrick. « Arborisms in Ovid’s Baucis and Philemon from Metamorphoses » PHILOLOG (Dec. 2005) Stanford University, philolog/2005/12/arborisms_in_ovids_baucis_and.html>

Jünger, Ernst. Les nombres et les dieux / Philémon et Baucis. Paris : Christian Bourgois Éditeur, 1995.

Legrand, Catherine, Jean-François Méjanès et Emmanuel Starcky. Le Paysage en Europe du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle, Actes du colloque organisé au musée de Louvre par le Service Culturel du 25 au 27 janvier 1990. Paris : Éditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 1994.

Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel. Paysage, paysans, L’art et la terre en Europe du Moyen Âge au XXe siècle. Paris : Réunion des musées nationaux, 1994.

Musée National du Grand Palais . Le Paysage dans la peinture occidentale, du XVIe au XIXe siècle, Chefs-d’œuvres du Musée du Louvre. Paris : Réunion des musées nationaux, 1995.

Roger, Alain. Court traité du paysage. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1997.

Paintings

Rubens, Pierre Paul. Landscape with Philemon and Baucis (1625) Vienne : Kunsthistorisches Museum.
Image from the site Olga’s Gallery, http://www.abcgallery.com/R/rubens/rubens81.html.

Rubens, Pierre Paul. Self-Potrait with Isabelle Brant (1609) Munich : Alte Pinakothek.
Image from the site Wikipedia, http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubens.

Rubens, Pierre Paul. Henri IV Receiving the Portrait of Marie de Medici (1621) Paris : Musée du Louvre.
Image from the site of the University of Illinois in Chicago, http://www.uic.edu/depts/ahaa/classes/ah111/imagebank.html

Arcimboldo, Giuseppe. Winter (1573) Paris : Musée du Louvre.
Image from the site Wikipedia, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Giuseppe_Arcimboldo

Ocampo, Octavio. Las visiones del Quijote. Guanajuato : Museo iconográfico del Quijote.
Image from the site of the Museo iconográfico del Quijote, http://museoiconografico.guanajuato.gob.mx/pintura.html

Notes

(1) « Cela ne signifie pas que le paysan est dépourvu de tout rapport à son pays et qu’il n’éprouve aucun attachement pour sa terre, bien au contraire ; mais cet attachement est d’autant plus puissant qu’il est plus symbiotique. » A. Roger, Court traité du paysage. Paris: Gallimard, 1997, p27.
(2) « contrat naturel (…) ou la mort ou la symbiose » Ibid. p152.
« surent cultiver, sans se voir assistés, Leur enclos et leur champ par deux fois vingt Etés. (…) un peu de lait, de fruits, et des dons de Cérès. » La Fontaine
(3) « Il y est né, au village samnite de Sulmo, et bien que vivant à Rome dès sa prime jeunesse, il est probable qu’il a toujours passé une partie de l’année dans ses domaines campagnards. Comme toujours chez les Latins, terres cultivées, labours et jardins lui sont plus familiers que les bois. La façon dont on sème, cultive, moissonne et consomme le fruit de la terre n’a plus pour lui le moindre secret » Jünger, Philémon et Baucis, Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1995, p151.
(4) “Thus in France, but also more generally in the West, the endimicity of the plague diminished as of the sixteenth century, which only serves to highlight the most violent outbreaks: London in 1603,1625 and 1665 ; Milan and Venis in 1576 and 1630 ; Spain in 1596-1602, 1648-1652, 1677-1685 ; Marseilles in 1720.” Delumeau, La Peur en Occident, Une cité assiégée. Paris : Fayard, 1978, p99.
(5) Ibid. p.129.
(6) « Jupiter intercède » ; « Jupiter exauça » ; « main puissante » La Fontaine.
(7) « Suivez-nous » ; « Mercure, appelle les vapeurs » La Fontaine.
(8) « Le sublime ce n’est pas ici seulement ce qui élève l’âme, mais signifie à l’observateur son écrasement, son anéantissement devant le spectacle d’une force incommensurable à la science… » C. Legrand. Le Paysage en Europe du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle, Actes du colloque organisé au musée de Louvre par le Service Culturel du 25 au 27 janvier 1990. Paris : Réunion des musées nationaux, 1994, p206.
(9) Corbin, L’homme dans le paysage. Paris : Éditions Textuel, 2001, p80.
(10) « Tous ces événements sont peints sur le lambris. Loin, bien loin les tableaux de Zeuxis et d’Apelle ! Ceux-ci furent tracés d’une main immortelle. » La Fontaine.
(11) « Elle devenait arbre, et lui tendait les bras… » La Fontaine.
(12) « des désirs constants, Avaient uni leurs cœurs dès leur plus doux Printemps. » La Fontaine.
(13) « O gens durs ! vous n’ouvrez vos logis ni vos cœurs ! » La Fontaine.
(14) « Demeure hospitalière, humble et chaste maison. » La Fontaine.
(15) « L’artiste, et plus précisément le peintre, va dessiner, peindre le paysage tout comme il le fera du visage. On voit combien l’interaction, l’interférence demeure d’importance entre l’homme et la nature qui l’entoure, combien cette dépendance va agir sur le « portrait » qui sera fait de l’un comme de l’autre. » Le Paysage dans la peinture occidentale, du XVIe au XIXe siècle, Chefs-d’œuvres du Musée du Louvre, Paris : Musée National du Palais, 1995, p308.
(16) « La nature est personnifiée, ainsi peut-elle être comprise. » Ibid. p257.

Between 1520-23 Titian painted Bacchus and Ariadne, one of a series of mythological works for the ducal study [studiolo, the so-called 'Camerini d'Alabastro'] in the castle of Alfonso d'Este, Duke of Ferrara. (1) [Fig. 1]. Although the room was disassembled in 1598 after the d'Este family line in Ferrara died out and the castle reverted to the pope, the duke wanted these mythological paintings:

“to be explicitly all'antica in both style and content; indeed the subjects were largely based on descriptions of lost classical paintings." (2)

This is an intriguing idea where it might be asked which lost paintings and which ancient authors might describe them? This is an immediately reminder of Aristotle's comparison of the paintings of Zeuxis and Polygnotus [Poetics 6.27-28] or the paintings of Polygnotus at Delphi as recorded by Pausanias in his Description of Greece, Book 10.xxv.1 & ff., especially the Polygnotus portrait of Ariadne in 10.xxix.4 from the Lesche of Cnidos:

“You see a painting of Ariadne. Seated on a rock, she is looking at her sister Phaedra...Ariadne was taken away from Theseus by Dionysus, who sailed against him with superior forces, and either fell in with Ariadne by chance or set an ambush to catch her. This Dionysus was, in my opinion, the first to invade India.” (3)

Another Pausanias passage [Book 20. xx. 3-4] describes the paintings in the temple of Dionysus Eleuthereus in the theater precinct in Athens:

“The oldest sanctuary of Dionysus is near the theater...There are paintings here...Pentheus and Lycurgos paying the penalty of their insolence to Dionysus, Ariadne asleep, Theseus putting out to sea, and Dionysus on his arrival [at Naxos] to carry off Ariadne.”

This passage is similar in part to what Titian has depicted in Bacchus and Ariadne. Other source possibilities also abound. In Pliny [Nat. Hist. XXXV. 36, 65 & ff.] there is the story about Zeuxis that his painted grape clusters were so real that even birds tried to peck at his grapes, (4) where, admittedly speculative, such clusters might reference a painted Dionysian scene, since it was in a theater context. The probable source of the lost art applicable to Titian's work here, however, is usually thought to be that series of Naples wall-paintings described by Philostratus:

“Nor yet is it enough to praise the painter for things for which someone else too might be praised; for it is easy to paint Ariadne as beautiful and Theseus as beautiful; and there are countless characteristics of Dionysus for those who wish to represent him in painting or in sculpture...Having arrayed himself in fine purple and wreathed his head with roses, Dionysus comes to the side of Ariadne.“ (5)

Naturally, while extant Roman wall paintings or mosaics often have Dionysus (or Bacchus) and Ariadne or their sacred marriage as subjects [e.g., the 1st c. BCE Bacchus hieros gam[e]os panel in the Villa of the Mysteries, (6) the painting of Bacchus and Ariadne known from Boscoreale but now also lost; (7) and the 3rd c. CE Antioch mosaic pavements of Dionysus and Ariadne in the House of Dionysus and Ariadne, (8) to name only a few], many of these would have come to light only after the 18th c. [especially at Pompeii and Herculaneum], long after Titian. Even though many of the ancient paintings may now be lost or their influences untraceable, the classical iconography of the likely subject matter is still accessible. Although the question of lost classical paintings is quarry obviously worthy of the chase, it is not the subject of this brief paper on Titian's use of both classical iconography and literary sources in Ovidian and possibly Catullan narrative. Mosaics showing Bacchus returning from India are also known, such as the famous Sousse, Tunisia pavement with tigers (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2 Bacchus returns from India, Sousse, Tunisia

Additionally, while it is likely that Titian's sources were mostly from literary texts rather than from the surviving classical visual arts, this problem will be discussed later in conjunction with early 16th c. Venetian collections such as that of Cardinal Grimani, (9) in which light we should consider that: "There were probably more notable works of ancient art available to artists in Venice and other northern Italian cities in the first decades of the sixteenth century than is normally supposed" as Marilyn Perry has suggested (10) [following the trail of Otto Brendel] with her notation of the early collections of Grimani, di Martini and Isabella d'Este.

If visual referents are difficult to prove, what about classical literary influences on this painting? In his landmark collection Essays on Literature and Art, Walter Pater discussed the school of Giorgione and Titian and extrapolated that the early Renaissance transformed prior literary narrative. It was his idea that "we may trace the coming of poetry into painting by fine gradations upwards" and also that a painting of this period can be "quite independent of anything definitely poetical in the subject it accompanies". (11) That poetry here should not be limited to mere literary text is clear, nevertheless Pater distinguishes between inspired visual accompaniment and the inspiring source subject. As Lucilla Burn elaborates:

“With the rediscovery of classical antiquity in the Renaissance, the poetry of Ovid
became a major influence on the imagination of poets and artists. His were among the first classical texts to benefit from the invention of printing in the late fifteenth century; they were widely and enthusiastically translated, and remained a fundamental influence on the diffusion and perception of Greek myths through subsequent centuries. “ (12)

Hope details the Duke of Ferrara's prior interest in artists such as Bellini, especially for the illustration of familiar Ovidian narrative. In the case of Bellini, however, the Duke did not express communication in "detailed instructions" and was ignorant of the "casual attitude of Venetian artists to erudite subject matter". (13) This description of casual attitude might well fit other artists and works, such as Hope mentions in Bellini's Feast of the Gods [National Gallery, Washington], (14) but Titian's attitude is anything but casual in his depiction of Bacchus and Ariadne, particularly since the classical iconography of Bacchus [or Dionysus in the Greek tradition], more than that of Ariadne, is a complex one, with multiple attributes or recognizable traits consistently portrayed in Greek and Roman art via black and red figure vase paintings, wall paintings, sculpture and mosaics. (15)

In terms of all'antica in style, Hope also mentions that "in general, authentically classical subject matter was almost always important to patrons elsewhere in Italy" (16) Furthermore, he claims that after d'Este's experience with Bellini, Titian was provided with a specific text to follow in the case of Bacchus and Ariadne (17) which classical texts can probably be adduced, as has been often attempted. As G. H. Thompson showed, Ovid is the most likely classical literary source for Titian, with probable direct allusions to the Ars Amatoria as a primary inspiration for this painting. Thompson also related and challenged the long-held opinions of Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo [Trattato dell'Arte della Pittura, Scoltura et Architettura, 1585] and Carlo Ridolfi in 1648 that Catullus Carmen LXIV was the primary source for this Titian painting. (18)

Figs. 3-4 Dionysus in Greek red-figure with leopard skin and ivy branch; Bacchus as a grape cluster from Pompeii, National Museum, Naples

First, however, we must establish the overall context in Titian's painting. The primary subjects are young Bacchus in the left center, Ariadne on the far left and the procession of Bacchus moving from right to left out of the woods on the island of Naxos, which Ovid recounts [Metamorphoses 3: 636-49] is the adopted home of Bacchus. Ariadne is half-turned toward the departed Theseus who has abandoned her on this island. The ship of Theseus may be seen on the sea at the horizon at Ariadne's left shoulder [however, if it is the ship of Theseus, where is the black sail we know from the myth?]. Ariadne is also now half-turned toward the youthful wine god leaping from his chariot, his wine-colored cape flying from his shoulders. The head of the unbearded Bacchus is also wreathed with ivy. After she played the courtesan to Theseus and betrayed her father Minos and his Cretan tyranny by helping Theseus to escape the labyrinth with his conquest of the monstrous Minotaur, Ariadne has slipped out of the saffron yellow robe, possibly the krokotos (22) of the hetaira, now placed on the ground behind her.

Having then consumed a krater of wine after removing the courtesan's yellow robe, perhaps in desolation at the perfidy of Theseus, she is now prepared to meet the wine god himself, in her unknowing readiness (enthusiasm from en + theos “in [the] god” or “god inside” or very loosely as the excitement coming from the god entering) (23) to be filled with his immediacy like one of his maenads. This sequence is demonstrated by the krater being placed on top of the krokotos, that is, Ariadne could not meet Bacchus until she had removed the shameful reminder of Theseus. The Bacchic procession [or thiasos group] includes the chariot of Bacchus, maenads or Bacchantes, dancing female attendants with cymbals, satyrs holding thyrsus and deer haunches, a satyr child [or faunus] dragging a deer head toward a pet dog, a drunken Silenus on a donkey, and an enigmatic snake-circled figure in the right center foreground often associated with Laocoon, the doomed Trojan priest of Apollo, who really has no direct part in this story of Bacchus meeting the abandoned Ariadne with his nuptial promise of the wedding gift, a crown of eight [or nine] stars overhead in the cumulus. Many of these elements will be enlarged in following sections.

As mentioned, the iconography of Bacchus or Dionysus is one of the most complex of all Greek and Roman deities, even as a relative newcomer "oriental" fertility god to Olympus.(24) There are at least ten recognizable attributes and many well-known vignettes in the corpus of Dionysian myth cycle [e.g. the "Birth of Dionysus", "Dionysus and His Maenads", Exekias' "Dionysus and the Pirates", "The Procession of Dionysus" and "Dionysus and Ariadne"] which would have been very familiar to most Greeks as well as specifically treated by such playwrights as Euripides [The Bacchae] and Aristophanes [The Frogs] since Dionysus was patron deity of dramatic tragedy and comedy. The very image of tragoedia was the death song or cry of the goat which invoked the god's presence at a dramatic festival. As mentioned [infra n.5 of this paper], Philostratus [Imagines I.15] records this iconography as already developed in antiquity. Boardman and others (25) have shown through the range of black figure, red figure and white-ground vase painting that the manifold attributes of Dionysus / Bacchus include [1] the kantharos wine cup or rhyton drinking horn; [2] a grape or ivy leaf wreath in his hair; [3] an effeminate mode of dress [most emphatic when the mature wine god is bearded]; [4] the thyrsus, his ivy wand; [5] satyrs, whose half-goat features and untamable propensity to drunkenness and lust are the natural attestations of wildness and bestiality; [6] panthers as wild companions, steeds or drawing his chariot; [7] maenads or bacchantes, women who dance ecstatically to Phrygian flutes, drums or cymbals and tear apart forest animals, usually deer, or cavort with wild cats; [8] ivy leaves and tendrils; [9] Silenus, his drunken old companion who always seems about to fall off his donkey in a stupor; [10] bearded in black figure vase scenes; and, lastly [10] serpents. T. B. L. Webster identifies core Dionysus scenes and his cult and Boardman also notes the presence of Dionysus on so many black figure scenes as probably due to "the function of so many of the vases involved". (26) These functions are connected to drinking either through the spring Anthesteria festival or its sacred marriage [Dionysus and Ariadne] as Richard Seaford, J. G. F. Hind [the wedding of Dionysus and Ariadne "was seen as a divine exemplar for mortal weddings"] and others attest, (27) or to celebrate the Great Dionysia festivals at Athens as M. Bieber has demonstrated. (28) Others have also examined the "animal vehicles" of Dionysus, including goats, serpents, ivy, fawns, etc. (29) T. B. L. Webster also distinguishes between the young, unbearded god and the older, bearded god, suggesting that it is the youthful Dionysus, as Titian shows here, who is involved with Ariadne [sometimes assaulting her] in the vase paintings of the 6th-4th c. BCE. (30)

In Titian's scene, the natural world of the painting seems to be divided diagonally between wildness and tameness. Titian has carefully coordinated the impenetrable density of woodsy greens and browns of the wild Dionysiac world through which the procession moves on the right without a given horizon. This is in contrast to the tamed landscape of cleared forest and island views with human habitations open to sky and sea on the left where Ariadne stands poised on the cliff, all planed to a visible horizon. What is more intense and exciting is that most of the stable horizon is distant to us while the woods are in the unstable foreground. Without warning, Titian places us closer to the wilder and unpredictable nature and wine god and his dangerous liberating tendencies [Dionysus Liber (31)]. It would also be remiss not to mention here examples of Titian's brilliant use of color, for which he was so famous, however faulty the perception `Michelangelo for form and Titian for colour', (32) a symbolic note as found in the garb of Ariadne. It is significant and perhaps not too programmatic that Ariadne's separate red, blue and white clothing blend to the prophetic wine color of Bacchus' robe at their meeting.

One of Titian's more inventive scenes in Bacchus and Ariadne is the confrontation between the satyr child [or faunus] and the dog. As a trophy of the wild orgiastic events in the woods where the Dionysiac rite of animal dismemberment usually take place, the satyr child drags a deer head on a string [probably belonging to the haunch of raw venison which one of the satyrs on the right is waving] whose blood and spoor the dog must have initially picked up. But now the dog - which the collar shows to be domesticated, perhaps as Ariadne's pet - having just smelled the little satyr, appears to be confused: it has nosed forward, but its upper body is slightly backing up away from its feet. Its stance seems to be asking cautiously "What is this creature [the satyr] which smells both half-humanly familiar and half-wildly unfamiliar?" As he looks outward to us, the satyr child is enjoying this joke at the dog's expense. Since there is no known classical precedent here, Titian has clearly inserted this little burlesque, perhaps for humorous effect, into the center foreground of the vignette.

Another curious element is the presence of the wild cats drawing the chariot of Bacchus, singularly noted by Panofsky. In antiquity, panthers [or leopards] are typical Dionysian steeds, e.g., the Greek mosaic at Pella with Dionysus on the panther, the Hellenistic House of the Muses [or Masks?] mosaic from Delos and the British Museum Roman Dionysus mosaic and Dionysus wall-painting fragment. (33) Although the word "leopard" [pardus, male or pardalis, female] does not appear anywhere in Ovid, Panofsky has imported a Greek quotation of Philostratus under the mention of panther, (34) where "panther" [panthera] occurs only once in Ovid: pictarumque iacent fera corpora pantherarum [Met. 3.669] in conjunction with Bacchus. As mentioned, the panther is a perfect animal for Dionysus because its name in Greek means ”all wild” pan + thera. Elsewhere in Ovid, lynxes are identified with the god in two other passages where the chariot of Bacchus is drawn by lynxes: colla lyncum [Met. 4.25], and lynxes were given by conquered India to the god: victa racemifero lyncas dedit India Baccho [Met. 15.413]. As Panofsky and others noted previously, tigers also draw the god's chariot: tigribus adiunctis aurea lora dabat in Ars Amatoria I. 550. (35) Confirming Ovidian use of tigers, or better, perhaps even deriving from the Ars Amatoria passage here in a literary borrowing from Ovid, it is specifically tigers in a Triumph of Dionysus mosaic at Sousse, Tunisia [circa 200 CE], who are shown drawing the chariot of Dionysus, where a panther is drinking [wine?] from a crater and a lion carries a baby satyr. (36) The presence of all three cats shows later Roman observational ability to distinguish them, even if Pliny earlier confused the distinction.

Figs. 5-6 Detail : Not Panthers but Cheetahs

But the cats in Titian's painting are certainly cheetahs, as can be seen by their unique eye markings, pattern of single spots [leopards have rosettes], smaller heads, longer legs and tufted tails [Figs. 5-6]. Panofsky explains the cheetahs in two ways: oriental Bacchus has returned from India with these cats and also that Titian would have wished to "gratify his patron's interest in rare, exotic animals... [an interest] so marked in Alfonso d'Este".(37) That may be true, although pard as the overall genus of spotted cats would have also easily included cheetahs in Renaissance bestiaries, most of which were derived in part first from Pliny and later from Physiologus [3rd. c. CE]. One of the most notable contemporary bestiaries is that of the most acute observer, Leonardo da Vinci, and was written in manuscript form mostly between 1489-1517 but was accessible in the 16th c. to only a very few readers [note the excerpts from Antonio de Beatis, 1517-18, a contemporary viewer mentioned in McCurdy's 1939 edition of Leonardo's Notebooks, p. 12]. Leonardo, who also was well-versed in Ovid's Metamorphoses [note p. 37 in McCurdy], describes leopards, panthers and tigers with some interesting conflations of the three large cats in a text which owes much to Pliny by mostly direct quotation. (38)

As noted earlier, since Ovid seems to mention panther only once in the retinue of Bacchus, otherwise having mentioned lynxes and yoked tigers pulling the god's chariot, it might be that Titian could be creative and satisfy the duke's taste for the exotic in his menagerie as well. There is, however, an additional note of irony here, as some have suggested, (39) that while motion is actively shown in all the other participants in the painting, these wild cats - specifically cheetahs, so capable of incredible speed - are the calmest beings in view, when by nature they should be the most active of all cats, not to mention more active than all the other elements in the picture. Could this be an intention of Titian that, by result of the god's exciting presence, the cheetahs are calm in comparison to all the other wilder Dionysiacs?

Panofsky, in his now famous Wrightsman Lectures [Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, published in 1969 as Problems in Titian: Mostly Iconographic] clarifies that the following generations were not so lucky in identifying Titian's actual subject matter in Bacchus and Ariadne:

"The subject of the painting is so unusual even in classical, let alone postclassical, art that Annabile [sp?] Roncagli - that gentleman who recorded the paintings illegally removed from Ferrara in 1598 - could not properly identify it: he describes the painting as `a picture of square format by Titian, in which Laocoon is depicted'." (40)

While we may not agree with Panofsky about a dearth of classical depictions of this subject, the opinion of Roncagli offers some evidence of either a general lack of knowledge about textual or visual classical iconography among Renaissance writers or inversely how careful Titian was in assembling textual and or visual representations of classical iconography [or both of the above]. Panofsky also notes a plaster cast of the Vatican group of Laocoon would have been accessible to Titian after 1520 (original excavated circa 1507) and does again suggest after Lomazzo a likely Catullus quotation of Bacchic votaries "girding themselves with coiling serpents"(41)

pars sese tortis serpentibus incingebant [Carmina LXIV 257-65]

Does this explain the enigmatic man, already mentioned, in the right foreground, the mysterious satyr-like figure grappling with the serpents? Is he actually part of the procession and is his tortured expression a Bacchic feature? Do we even know that this is a Laocoon allusion, as Otto Brendel maintained? (42) The Hellenistic period Laocoon group in question was excavated circa 1507 from Nero's Domus Aurea or Golden House near the Colosseum in Rome (43) and was immediately copied in drawings by such artists as the mid-16th c. Federico Zucchari. (44) The influence of this sculpture was enormous in the Neoclassical period. The Laocoon group also served for Johann Joachim Winkelmann, the arbiter of Neoclassicism, as the model for "an artistic wonder, in which the greatest beauty is born of the greatest suffering". (45) In his Laocoon of 1776, Gottfried Lessing also delineated the domains of poetry [time-related] and sculpture [space-related], (46) which still has some bearing now in this discussion on the mutually-inspiring relationship between literature and visual arts. This is nothing new: we are often reminded of continuing inspiration between distant cultures by Keats' likely `quotation' in his "Ode on a Grecian Urn" to the mid-5th c. BCE Parthenon frieze of Phidias with its "heifer lowing at the skies".

Fig. 7 Laocoon sculpture group, sketch circa 1600, Lucio Massari (was Laocoon more familiar to Roncagli's day than Bacchus and Ariadne?)

As for the Laocoon group, it appears that the Catullus line mentioned above is too specific to ignore, as Wind also stated,(47) although the Laocoon group could certainly be used in conjunction with a literary source for Titian. This would underscore the otherwise coincidental nature of two equally important sources made all the more significant by bolstering each other individually.

While visual classical sources in sculpture and other art forms and the diffusion of classical iconography appear at first to be scanty in the early 16th c., this long-held view changed after pioneering studies such as Brendel's and continues with Mattusch,(48) where architecture and the availability of classical art in Renaissance Italy came to light through contemporary accounts showing major collections in the early 16th c. in addition to Cardinal Grimani's in Venice and those of the papal courts of Julius II and Leo X. (49) Phyllis Bober, Ruth Rubinstein and Leatrice Mendelsohn, among others, have also catalogued a full array of Classical artistic sources in the early 16th c. and beyond, and has demonstrated considerable collections of Classical sculpture in Italy at this time. (50) Jane Reid has also catalogued Renaissance use of classical myths with clues that significant artistic precedents existed before Titian. (51) Besides the Laocoon group, it was becoming increasingly possible for traveling artists to have seen various Roman sculptures and mosaics, wall-paintings, monuments, etc., as well as some Roman copies of Greek sculpture. Certainly much of the burgeoning impetus for rediscovery of classicism was provided by the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the efforts of pope Nicholas V [reigning 1447-1455] to acquire Greek manuscripts for the growing Vatican Library through scholar-translators like Poggio Bracciolini whose earlier Sylloges [1430] systematized classical inscriptions. Written guidebooks also conducted pilgrims around Roman classical monuments, one of the best being the Mirabilia of Magister Gregory [14th c.], with other texts such as those of Giovanni Dondi's Iter Romanum [14th c], and the antiquities dealer Cyriacus of Ancona's Itinerary [early 15th c.] as well as the later topographic studies and collections of Julius Pomponius Laetus [circa 1470] and the work of Flavio Biondo, De Roma Instaurata [1446], which compared ancient texts with ancient remains. (52)

Where would we most encounter Ovid in Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne? As mentioned, G.H. Thompson claimed Ovid is the most direct source in Ars Amatoria I. 527-64 (although a similar vignette is his Ars Amatoria I.547-62), even more so than the Catullus Carmina LXIV [50-78, 116-43 & 254-64] or Ovid's Fasti [3.459-516] and Metamorphoses [8.174-82]. Edgar Wind, of course, suggested the Fasti along with Catullus. (53) All of these passages have been much mentioned as literary sources for Titian's painting. (54)

First, acknowledging the debt to Thompson, the Ars Amatoria I. 527-64 passage can be summarized thusly. Ariadne [the Gnosian maid], after being abandoned and wandering on Naxos [Dia], has just awakened and is disconsolate about Theseus when the noisy frenzied retinue of Bacchus comes. She faints in fear at the sight, including drunken Silenus, and is then revived by the god who, after giving his reins to the tigers, promises her marriage with the crown of stars as nuptial gift. Bacchus then leaps down from his chariot to offset her fear at the tigers and bears her away, accompanied by the chanting of the holy revelers, `Euhoe!' or `Hail, Hymeneus!'. Ovid concludes " so do the bride and the god meet on the sacred couch" [line 564] :

Sic coeunt sacro nupta deusque toro.

Thus, in Ars Amatoria I. 527 & ff. we see Titian could have known this Ovidian version of the event, since these features are common to both: Ariadne's loss over Theseus on Naxos, the Bacchic procession with drunken Silenus on his donkey and great cats pulling his chariot, the leaping of the god from chariot to earth, and the crown of stars. However, there is no serpent-writhed precedent in the foreground figure in Ovid's account here.

Second, following the earlier attribution of the late 16th c. Lomazzo and mid-17th c. Ridolfi, Catullus' Carmen LXIV with its Pelian embroidery depiction can also be summarized thusly. On the shore of Naxos, the just awakened and deserted Ariadne sees Theseus sailing away, and in her mindless desolation she has let all her garments slip down. In madness, she wanders up and down the island from rugged mountains to shore again. Elsewhere on the island, youthful Bacchus also wanders, seeking Ariadne with raging satyrs and Sileni crying 'Evoe!, Evoe!', where some in the Bacchic processions wave thyrsi, toss mangled limbs of animals, gird themselves with writhing serpents, beat timbrels or clash cymbals with uplifted hands.

Thus, in Catullus' poem we see Titian could have known this version of the event, since these features are common to both: Ariadne's loss over Theseus on Naxos, the frenzied Bacchic procession with satyrs and sileni, specifically with satyrs waving thyrsi or animal limbs, the writhing serpent-girded figures, and timbrels and cymbals. However, Ariadne seems to be unclothed here and Silenus on his donkey doesn't actually appear. There is no mention of the god's chariot, Ariadne's nuptial crown of stars [although it is mentioned in Carmen LXVI], or more important, no mention even of Ariadne actually meeting the god at all in Catullus LXIV. Noted by Lomazzo, Wind and Panofsky, the serpent-girded figure looms as perhaps the most important allusion to Catullus. Girded serpents, as mentioned previously, are not accidental to Bacchic processions [or thiasoi, initiate groups in Bober's terms, op. cit.], as can be seen in the famous white-ground Brygos Cup [Munich 2647] of the maenad clutching a baby panther with a live snake girdle as her head-band (Fig. 8), as Eva Keuls states "More often Maenads are depicted with a snake coiled around one arm, in reference to the red-figure Kleophrades cup [Munich 2344], a detail referred to as "snake handling" (see image below), (55) which common feature we see on many other vases, e.g., the Attic Red-figure amphora by the Altamure painter around 470-50 BC from Capua [MS5466 - University Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania] where snakes also appear on the figure's head as a snake-girdled head-band.