Nemesis
Titian’s Fatal Women
NICHOLAS HALL
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Nemesis
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Nemesis Titian’s Fatal Women
NICHOLAS HALL 17 East 76th Street New York NY 10021
CONTENTS
7
Foreword
Nicholas H. J. Hall
11
Severed Heads and Shifting Identities: Titian’s Paintings of Judith, or Salome, or Herodias
Paul Joannides
31
Herodias, Salome, and Judith:
Their Stories and Some Literary Interpretations
Ian Kennedy
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FOREWORD My appreciation of Titian is entwined with early childhood memories. As a seven-year-old boy I visited Venice where my father had just started a pre-university course. We used to stay at a modest but respectable pensione (Ezra Pound had dinner there every night) near the church of the Salute. There I saw my first works by Titian. My father used to send me out, notebook in hand, to explore Venice. I discovered the early masterpieces in the Frari, and venturing further afield the late Martyrdom of St Lawrence, nocturnal with muted fleshtones and flames flickering against the opulent marble interior of the Gesuiti. I confess that I didn’t care for late Titian at that time. I found his dark palette and sombre mood frightening. I remember, going to the Accademia, far preferring the romantic Lotto Portrait of a Young Man to Titian’s last work, the Entombment, which even then struck me as both gloomy and unfinished. In 1983, however, I like many people was completely converted to the profound pathos and technical virtuosity of Titian’s late style, when the Genius of Venice exhibition opened at the Royal Academy in London. Years earlier, the campaign to save Titian’s Death of Actaeon for the nation had alerted people to the importance of these mature works, but it was the arrival of the rarely seen and virtually unknown Flaying of Marsyas which created a sensation. Its broken brush-strokes, subdued palette enlivened with flashes of colour and its violence both in subject and treatment were a revelation. Titian was no longer seen as the courtly, sensual successor to Giorgione but as a painter of our day. A painter who spoke to artists such as Bacon, de Kooning and Auerbach. This small study addresses many issues associated with Titian’s late work. And we are indebted to Paul Joannides for generously taking the time to look at this magnificent “Raczynski Herodias” that is the centerpiece of his essay and to put it in a context that is new and, in many ways, surprising. Paul discusses such things as the difference between unfinished and late Titian (not the same thing) and Titian’s workshop practice.
Joannides addresses two important issues. First, the subject, which can now be properly described as Herodias with the Head of St. John the Baptist; and the second is the dating, and the relationship of this painting to at least five variations of the composition by Titian. The subject was clearly popular as one (now lost) version ended up in the collection of the Hapsburg Archduke Leopold William, and another in the collection of King Charles I. Given the morally ambiguous nature of some of the subjects of this series (after all neither Salome nor Herodias were moral exemplars), one wonders what underlies the frequency with which Titian painted such subjects. There was clearly a vogue in cinquecento Venice for depicting strong women who acted outside societal norms; Sebastiano del Piombo, Cariani and Catena all contributed to the genre. But, as with so many of his most succesful compositions, Titian returned to try it again and again. The “Raczynski Herodias” is being exhibited in Endless Enigma: Eight Centuries of Fantastic Art at David Zwirner gallery in New York. This collaborative project examines the role of fantasy, dreams and the subconscious in Western art. A theme that recurs is the idea of the woman as both love object and destroyer of man. This lies behind the choice of Nemesis, implacable yet irresistibly beautiful as the title of this book. In view of the fixation with the femme fatale from Symbolism through Surrealism and even to independent artists like Picasso we have added to the study of Titian’s depictions of these women, some selections of literature from the late nineteenth century. We have illustrated these stories of Judith, Herodias and Salome with works by artists of the period. I would like to thank a number of people in the preparation of this booklet, but most of all the private New York collector who has agreed to this loan, and Frances Beatty who has been invaluable in encouraging the owner of this great picture to have it cleaned and properly published. I am grateful also to Paul Joannides for taking up this project with such enthusiasm. Paul has a particular expertise in the understanding of Titian’s series of paintings of the same or similar subjects and he brings this to bear with authority in these pages. I would like to thank my good friend Ian Kennedy for making the selections of literary excerpts. Dianne Modestini has been a remarkable
resource, both in cleaning at short notice such a complicated picture and in providing valuable insights in technical examination, most especially the x-rays. My colleagues at the gallery have provided essential support. Most notably, my wife Yuan Fang, who has worked on the project from the outset and provides inspiration and constructive critical commentary in equal measure. Bayan Talgat, Sara Land and Oliver Rordorf have all made the process move smoothly. Our designer, Larry Sunden has brought style and calm to the endeavour. Lastly, we are extremely grateful to Paul Mitchell for the generous loan of an outstanding period frame. Nicholas H. J. Hall August 2018
ďœš
Severed Heads and Shifting Identities: Titian’s Paintings of Judith, or Salome, or Herodias
Paul Joannides
Titian, Herodias with the Head of St. John the Baptist, 1540s–70, oil on canvas, 114 x 96 cm. Private Collection, New York
PA R T 1
Severed Heads and Mysterious Women: Titian’s Paintings of Judith? Or Salome? Or Herodias? Titian’s treatment of subject matter was always elastic: inventive in devising narratives, acute in registering psychological states—he is, after all, a great portraitist—he felt no obligation to follow precisely either visual models or canonical texts; but with the caveat that Titian’s employment of contemporary ephemeral literature remains largely uninvestigated. Able to present the same subject in radically different ways—as in his Assumptions in Venice and Verona—Titian also created new subjects, such as Venus Restraining Adonis, developed and adapted from the biblical story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. Titian’s adaptations and cross-fertilisations of adjacent themes and images reveal a poet’s approach to simile, metaphor and compression: thus his fresco of 1509–1510 above the entrance to the Fondaco dei Tedeschi combines a Judith and a Justice with a personification of Venice, fusing in a single image features proper to different traditions. Conversely, Titian could employ more or less the same figures and arrangements for different purposes: his Berlin Pomona, holding aloft a dish of fruit, was transformed, on the Prado canvas, into Salome, raising the Baptist’s severed head in a silver trencher—or vice versa; in a third transformation on a—largely studio—canvas once in the Orléans Collection, she raises a casket, becoming, perhaps Psyche or Pandora or a personification of Wealth. In all three paintings the young woman looks directly at the viewer: she is at once a bella, an idealised portrait and a performer.1
Fig. 1 Titian, Judith with the Head of Holofernes, 1515–16, oil on canvas, 89.5 x 73 cm. FC 517. Palazzo Doria Pamphilj, Roma © Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo
Titian’s earliest portable treatment of Judith is the painting of 1515–16 in the Doria Pamphili collection; it was no doubt presented to Alfonso I during Titian’s stay in the Duchy of Ferrara in the early months of 1516 (fig. 1). Copies exist but, it seems, no autograph variants.2 The painting
has also been called Salome and Herodias because the severed head rests upon a trencher—which could, of course, serve as a symbolic halo— whereas Holofernes’ head is usually deposited in a sack or basket. But trenchers had already been transferred to paintings that unequivocally depict Judith, by Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, and Michelangelo, among others—and such transfers were to continue. What can only be Titian’s painting is described in the Este inventories in 1530 as a Judith and this identification fits the moral and physical demeanour of the two women.3 The leading lady’s déshabille and restrained clothing is appropriate for Judith rather than Salome, usually lavishly dressed, as is her pensive expression; so is her age: she is the young widow of the Bible, not the adolescent cat’s paw who cavorted for Herod. And her maidservant, Abra, here characterised as a girl rather than—as is more usual—an older woman, looks up at her with admiration, not complicity or horror.4 The action takes place at dawn, partly out of doors, not in a palace, as the two women make their escape from the Assyrian bivouac. Nevertheless, the absence of a sword and the inclusion of a trencher introduce an ambiguity which will continue to the end of Titian’s career. A simple halo above the severed head would have been sufficient to anchor the subject as a Salome but there is no halo on any of Titian’s severed heads; nor do any of them resemble at all closely those of his Baptists; unlike, say, Solario and Luini, Titian never ennobles a severed head. Half-length treatments of Judith were produced by several Venetian painters in the first two decades of the 16th century. The earliest is probably the picture dated 1510 in the National Gallery in London, painted by Sebastiano del Piombo. It is traditionally identified as a Salome because the severed head rests upon a trencher, but the composition employs a portrait formula to bring the viewer into direct contact with the heroine, whose firm, strong and unadorned characterisation identifies her as Judith.5 A somewhat later composition by Catena once existed in two versions of which only that in Galleria Querini-Stampalia is known today.6 It too shows Judith in a portraitlike pose, holding a sword with Holofernes’ severed head placed on a parapet before her; it displays an obvious debt to the Self-Portrait as David by Giorgione, with whom Catena for a time shared a studio.
A different approach was taken by Cariani who, in a painting generally dated in the later 1510s in a private collection, placed Judith and Abra together, in the open but not obviously in flight; Judith holds a carving-knife in her right hand and Holofernes’ head in her left, while Abra claps her left hand over his mouth, as though still smothering his screams.7 Venetian treatments of Salome, however, are virtually non-existent, except in narrative paintings: she was rather a speciality of Milanese artists. The most famous portrayals of the subject, at halflength, by Andrea Solario and Bernardino Luini, show Salome receiving the Baptist’s head from the executioner—sometimes reduced just to a muscular arm suspending John’s head above Salome’s cup—and their somewhat perverse psychology strongly suggests the inspiration of Leonardo. But Luini also showed Salome looking directly at the viewer, holding out the trencher with the Baptist’s head and accompanied by a shadowy executioner on the left, in a painting now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, which seems to exist in only one version (fig. 2).8 So far as we know Titian represented neither Judith nor Salome again for some years and when he returned to the subject(s), it was with a new composition in which the protagonist, whichever role she is playing, gazes directly at the viewer and presents him or her with a head on a trencher or in a sack, held near the lower edge of the picture. It seems inescapable that Titian was aware of Luini’s Vienna prototype and that it is another instance in his work of inspiration found in Milanese painting. Of course, Titian had frequently included in his compositions figures looking outwards but this seems to have been a new departure for him. Its effect is ambiguous: on the one hand it might involve the viewer as a participant in the action, enrolling him or her as the recipient of the head; on the other it can be seen as a distancing device which reduces the status of the action to that of an attribute of the actress playing the role. The latter is the kind of
Fig. 2 Bernardino Luini, Salome with the Head of St. John the Baptist, ca.1525–30, oil on panel, 55.7 x 42.5 cm. Gemäldegalerie, 190 © Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
conception with which we are familiar at a later date: Mr or Mrs or Miss X as Y or Z, but it was not adopted by Titian for other subjects.9 The earliest painting of this type—or the earliest of which visual record survives—was a now-lost canvas once in the collection of the Archduke Leopold William.10 While it does not appear in any of David Teniers’ paintings of the Archduke’s Gallery we have his small painted copy, which records the picture’s colors, as well as Lucas Vorsterman II’s reversed engraving after it (figs. 3 and 4).11 The action is set in an interior and Fig. 3 David Teniers II, After concerns three figures; the leading lady displays on a Titian, Salome with the Head of St. trencher the severed head. At the left is a woman, whose John the Baptist, oil on canvas, laid down on panel, 17.1 x 12 cm. age is hard to judge, clad in a yellow cloak which she Photograph Courtesy of Christie’s lifts from her face with one hand below and one above © 2018 her head. Lower right is a black page-boy for whom Fig. 4 David Teniers II, Theatrum Pictorum (1660); plate 51, engraved there is no warrant in the Book of Judith, or in visual by L. Vorsterman II tradition. However, Mantegna had represented Abra as a black woman and perhaps this prompted Titian.12 Titian placed black pages in comparable positions in the Laura dei Dianti of ca. 1524 and in the Fabrizio Salvaresio of 1557 and he liked to contrast skin colours; he did so again, with a black woman, in his Diana and Actaeon. This boy, who is repeated in later versions and variants, may have been an insertion without specific meaning; here he is little more than a bystander. Judging from Teniers’ copy the Archduke’s painting was a finished work, and the figure-type and costume, notably the ruff, suggest a date in the early to mid–1540s.13 If this is correct, Titian soon returned to this composition. In 1548 he undertook, at Charles V’s request, a posthumous portrait of Isabella of Portugal (117 x 98 cm.).14 He painted Isabella not on a fresh canvas but over a variant of Leopold William’s painting (figs. 5 and 6). The main head is angled more pronouncedly, her features seem a little pulpier—conforming to the fuller female types that Titian came to employ towards 1550—but the arrangement is the same. That Titian submerged this lay-in implies that another was available and, indeed, this revised type is known in two variants. One,
the main focus of this essay, is the ex-Raczynski canvas, now privately owned in New York (fig. 7). The other is in the Museum of Western Art in Tokyo (fig. 8). Both paintings, which are to a lesser or greater extent unfinished, are generally dated by critics to Titian’s later years—but this judgement, while reasonable for the Tokyo canvas, which shows the ‘broken’ all-over approach of Titian ca. 1570, needs to be nuanced for the ex-Raczynski canvas, which was probably laid-in in the mid-to-late 1540s at the same time as the painting beneath Isabella. Its surface is not equally unfinished: the bodice is quite smoothly painted, as are her upper arms. The head and the platter, however, are treated much more in Titian’s later manner as are the page boy and the woman on the left. It is evident that the picture remained as a work in progress in Titian’s studio for many years, and that he never fully resolved what he wished to do with it; the heroine’s hands, for example, were left undefined.
Fig. 5 Titian, The Empress Isabel of Portugal, 1548, oil on canvas, 117 x 98 cm. P000415 © Museo Nacional del Prado Fig. 6 X-ray photograph of Titian, The Empress Isabel of Portugal (detail), 1548, oil on canvas, 117 x 98 cm. P000415. Museo Nacional del Prado
The ex-Raczynski and Tokyo paintings are related to a third, now in Detroit (fig. 9). Containing only two figures, it unambiguously represents Judith, shown holding a sword and dropping into a sack the
Fig. 8 Titian, Salome with the Head of St. John the Baptist, ca. 1560-70, oil on canvas, 90 x 83.3 cm. P.2011-0002 © The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo
Fig. 7 Titian, Herodias with the Head of St. John the Baptist, 1540s–70, oil on canvas, 114 x 96 cm. Private Collection, New York
Fig. 9 Titian, Judith with the Head of Holofernes, ca. 1570, oil on canvas, 113 x 95.3 cm. 35.10 Gift of Edsel B. Ford. Detroit Institute of Arts © Bridgeman Images Fig. 10 X-ray photograph of Titian, Judith with the Head of Holofernes, ca. 1570, oil on canvas, 113 x 95.3 cm. 35.10 Gift of Edsel B. Ford. Detroit Institute of Arts
head of Holofernes. The head is large enough to suggest that of Goliath and Titian was no doubt paralleling Judith with David.15 Abra’s role is now taken by the black boy who now holds open the sack—the single painting in the group in which he plays an active part. Judith, clad in a luxurious shift appropriate to attract the Assyrian general, is minimally bejewelled and wears only a single string of pearls; her forearms are bared, a wise precaution since, as we know from Caravaggio and Artemisia, severing heads is messy. But bared forearms are a common feature of all the paintings under discussion and not necessarily specific to Judith. X-ray examination establishes that this Judith is also a superimposition, upon a portrait traditionally identified with Charles V. However, despite a ghostly orb and sceptre a puffy jeweled hat clearly visible in the x-ray (fig. 10) is image is unlike anything in other portraits of Charles V. So it would seem to be unconnected, with the portrait of Isabella, which covers the related composition. But there is no evidence from the x-ray that the composition of the Detroit Judith was modified in any significant way while Titian was working on it, so it is possible that it followed an earlier version, now lost. It is taken further than the other two paintings and is more homogenous in surface effect; it is generally and probably correctly dated ca. 1570. The ex-Raczynski and Tokyo canvases follow the Leopold William and “sub-Isabella” prototypes, but are closer to the latter in the main figure’s fuller forms; the figures are about the same size and the black page is now a little more involved, but the former is more finished. It
was first published in 1960 by Antonio Morassi when it was in a private collection in Zurich.16 With a label on the back in Polish giving the Raczynski name, it seems first to be recorded in that family’s possession in the early 19th century. The Tokyo painting (oil on canvas; 90 x 82.5 cm.), is more obviously unfinished and, as remarked above, later in style; it was probably laid-in from the ex-Raczynski canvas: x-ray reveals no significant pentimenti and no other underlying composition. The protagonist’s dress is simultaneously more seductive and lavish and her movement more vigorous. The smaller format and tighter framing give it greater immediacy and it is notable that the trencher and head are placed higher in the picture surface and thrust forward more emphatically. The Tokyo version has a longer history.17 Once owned by Charles I and bearing his brand, it was offered in the Commonwealth sale of 1650, at the high price of £150 but was withheld by Oliver Cromwell. Recovered in 1660 it remained in the Royal Collection until 1732/36, after which all trace of it was lost until its reappearance in 1994. At an unknown date after 1667 it was enlarged to the same dimensions (124 x 99 cm.) as, and no doubt in conjunction with, a Type I Magdalen by Titian or from his studio, still in the Royal Collection, which was expanded from 93 x 78 to 125 x 99 cm.;18 presumably they were displayed together but the Magdalen, a finished picture, was not re-worked. The enlargement and over-painting of the Tokyo picture have now been removed. The four paintings—“Leopold William,” “sub-Prado,” “ex-Raczynski,” “Tokyo”—contain the same three figures, but in each the head on the trencher is displayed at a different angle. But whose head is it: the Baptist’s or Holofernes’? The issue of subject has been deferred hitherto but now becomes pressing. Do all four represent the same event? Or did Titian employ the same composition for different ones? Can their histories enlighten us? There is, of course, none for the sub-Prado canvas and no commentary on the ex-Raczynski painting earlier than Morassi’s publication has yet been found, except the verso inscription which identifies the subject as Judith and Holofernes and which must shortly precede 1960. But there are early, if laconic, interpretations of the other two. Leopold William’s canvas was successively described in the Della Nave Inventory as Judith or perhaps Salome; in the Hamilton inventory as, simply, Salome, and then, in
that of Leopold William, as Herodias; in the Prodromos of 1735, pl.18, in which it became a Palma, it was again called Salome. And when Charles I’s painting was put up for sale in 1650 it was as “Herod holding St John’s head in a platter by Tytsyan”—Herod, obviously, Herodias abbreviated. But its reservation by the Lord Protector is directly relevant to its interpretation: alert to examples of divine authorisation for a beheading, Cromwell must have believed the painting to represent Judith. Once it had regained the Royal collection, the 1650 description was repeated, slightly amplified: “A Herodias with A John Baptist head in A platter and her maide by her.” Thereafter it was recorded consistently as Herodias until, in 1732/36, it once again became Judith; it is worth underlining that it was never called Salome. When we first hear of them, therefore, ca.1640, the subject-matter of these two very similar paintings was uncertain, varying between one heroine—Judith—and two villainesses—Salome or Herodias. How can we identify them? In Leopold William’s picture the sober demeanour of the central figure and as far as one can make out, her expression, suggests Judith and the woman on the left would therefore be Abra, although her gesture is hard to interpret: for what it is worth, Abra is also dressed in yellow by Lotto as well as by Botticelli and Michelangelo. If this is so, the moment shown would presumably be Judith’s display of Holofernes’ head after her return to Bethulia; a subject represented in sculpture by Lorenzo Ghiberti and, more relevantly for Venice, by Tullio Lombardo on the Vendramin Tomb.Yet the arrangement could also suggest Salome or Herodias, offering the Baptist’s head to Herod. The plainness of the costume, of course, might seem to favour Judith, shown soberly clad by such artists as Cariani and Catena.19 But Judith describes dressing herself in her gladdest clothes and jewels in the book of Judith and Veronese and his followers show her richly clad. In short, an elaborate costume might be worn either by Salome or Judith, but Salome is less likely to have a plain one. The ex-Raczynski canvas is the closest to Leopold William’s version in colour and form but the central woman seems somewhat older and more matronly, although the re-working of her face compromises our reading of her age. When he laid-in the composition, roughly contemporaneously with the lay-in beneath Isabella as suggested
above, Titian probably intended it to represent Judith. For, as Dianne Modestini has observed, a little below the second woman’s head is the face of an older woman (see illustration on p. 24), who bends forward to look down at the severed head. Such a positioning and type suggest Abra. Titian then moved this head higher up the picture-surface to its present position. It becomes thus possible that the ex-Raczynski lay-in preceded the composition seen in Leopold William’s painting, for the lower placing of the head appears in no other version and could in principle have been a first attempt. But on balance it seems more probable that it was a speculative revision of the Leopold William arrangement, with which Titian decided not to proceed. Titian’s latest intentions for the ex-Raczynski canvas are clarified by the male head inserted on the right; this, although imprecisely defined, is sombre and seems to be elderly; it can only be that of Herod. Therefore, what Titian is now showing is Herodias displaying the head of the Baptist in triumph, having taken it from her daughter Salome, who would be the veiled woman at the left and who, all viewers seem to agree, is the younger of the two. Herod’s introduction turns the picture into what Freud called “a family romance” and naturally focuses our attention on the personality of Herodias. There may be a reflection of the perverse psychology that so fascinated Leonardo and his followers, which would be taken up again at the end of the century in Milan, notably by Francesco Cairo. In the Tokyo painting, however, which, we may remember, was called Herodias but which Cromwell must have interpreted as Judith, it does seem more likely that the protagonist is Salome. While her face too has been re-worked, she is more youthful than the woman in the ex-Raczynski canvas, and her lavish jewellery, the chain around her neck and jewels and pearls in on her shoulder, her necklace and her hair, increase her erotic allure, as does her décolleté. It is also true that alone of these pictures, the head in the trencher bears at least a slight resemblance to that of the Baptist in other paintings by Titian. In this case the woman on the left would be Herodias and she does, indeed, seem somewhat older than the same figure in the ex-Raczynski version. But, it must be stressed, these observations do not constitute proof of the subject, and while it seems reasonable to question Cromwell’s
judgement and call the Tokyo painting Salome any interpretation must come with another caveat: that until we have a description of the subject dating from Titian’s lifetime, any interpretation can only be provisional.20 Pomona, like so many other paintings by Titian, is superimposed upon a discarded portrait. A valuable survey of related material is provided by Andrea Donati, ‘Salome e Giuditta’, in Tiziano, Indagini sulla Pittura, Rome, 2016, pp. 106–149; see pp. 124–130 for the Pomona and its derivatives. 2 For an overview of treatments of Judith, see Jaynie Anderson, Judith, Paris, n.d. pp. 122–123. 3 Paul Joannides, ‘Titian’s Judith in its Context. The Iconography of Decapitation’, Apollo, CXXXIV, 361, March 1992, pp. 163–170; Simon Oakes, ‘Titian’s Salome and its Copies; Some errata and Addenda to Wethey’, Studi Tizianeschi; VI-VII, 2014, pp. 88–96; Donati, op.cit., pp. 122–123. 4 The name Abra may, as Anderson, op. cit. suggests, follow an oral tradition. 5 See Matthias Wivel, ed., Michelangelo and Sebastiano, catalogue of an exhibition at the National Gallery, London, 11 March–25 June 2017, no. 7, pp. 102–103 (entry by Alison Goudie). 6 Giles Robertson, Vincenzo Catena, Edinburgh, 1954, no. 47, p. 67. 7 Rodolfo Pallucchini and Francesco Rossi, Giovanni Cariani, Milan, 1983, no.36, p. 120; Cariani painted another Judith in which the heroine rests Holofernes’ head on a parapet (ibid, no. 57, p. 132). 8 Angela Ottino della Chiesa, Bernardino Luini, Novara, 1956, no. 244, p. 140, oil on wood, 55 x 43 cm. 9 Of course, portraits of individuals as historical or mythological figures are not infrequent (Giorgione’s Self-Portrait as David, for example; but such portraits do not show their subjects in mid-action). 10 See Jeremy Wood, “Buying and Selling Art in Venice, London and Antwerp: The Collection of Bartolommeo Della Nave and the Dealings of James, Third Marquess of Hamilton, Anthony van Dyck, and Jan and Jacob van Veerle, c. 1637–50,” TheWalpole Society, vol. 80, 2018, pp. 1–202, no. 19, p. 94. The painting is unrecorded after 1735 and its fate is unknown. It was probably discarded because it was thought to be by Palma Giovane while, ironically, Palma’s canvas of the subject, still in the KHM, was accepted as a Titian. 11 Christie’s, London, 6 July 2018, lot 124; although similar in size to Teniers’ series of copies planned for printmaking, it includes a simulated frame and is on canvas not wood. This suggests that it was not originally part of the series but was cut from a larger canvas. Engraving: lettering Titian o. 6 Alta 4, lata 51 Vorsterman f. /Teniers Gal (Plate 142 x 102 mm; image 130 x 95 mm.). 12 Veronese cast a black woman as Abra in his Vienna and Caen paintings of Judith. 1
13 See for examples, the portraits reproduced by Andrea Donati, Paris Bordone, Catalogo Ragionato, Soncino, 2014, nos. 194, 205, 209. 14 For the Isabella see Miguel Falomir ed., Tiziano, catalogue of an exhibition at the Museo Nacional del Prado, 10 June–7 September, 2003, no. 30, pp. 208– 209 (entry by Miguel Falomir). Falomir has suggested to me that Titian took a finished or nearly finished version of the composition to Augsburg for possible sale and when Charles requested a new portrait of Isabella, overpainted it. I am most grateful to Miguel Falomir and Ana González Mozo for access to the full x-ray image. For additional material see Donati, op. cit., pp. 132–135. 15 In Giorgione’s Hermitage Judith the heroine spurns the head of Holofernes in a pose derived from—and surely deliberate alluding to—Donatello’s bronze David. It seems originally to have been paired with a David which, paradoxically, was not based on Donatello. 16 Antonio Morassi, “Una Salomé di Tiziano riscoperta,” Pantheon, XXVI, Nov–Dec, 1960, pp. 456–466. Morassi believed the Raczynski canvas to be identical both with that owned by Leopold William, and that owned by Charles I, fusing three pictures into one. He cited no evidence for the provenance but presumably relied on Roger Raczynski, the previous owner, who may also have told him that it came from the Lubormirski. The inscription, which is recent, reads: 34/no. 40. Szkolawenecka, 16Wiek, Judytazglowa, Holoenerernese,Wlasnosc. P. Amb. Rogera Raszynskego (“Venetian School 16th century, Judith with the Head of Holofernes; property of Amb[assador] Roger Raczynski”—with thanks to Zuzanna Sarnecka). 17 For the Tokyo picture, with previously unknown provenance information, see Peter Humfrey in Peter Humfrey et al., The Age of Titian, catalogue of an exhibition at the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, 5 August–5 December, 2004, no. 65, pp. 178–179, 436. Among Charles I’s latest acquisitions, it does not appear in Van der Doort’s inventory. 18 John Shearman, The Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen,The Earlier Italian Pictures, Cambridge, 1983, no. 279, pp. 261–262 19 Lotto, as so often, is an exception: his Judith in the Banca Nazionale di Lavoro is richly dressed. 20 A version of this picture, perhaps a copy of it in its repainted state, is reproduced by Donati, op. cit., fig. N22, p. 133
X-ray photograph, Titian, the “Racznyski Herodias,” oil on canvas 114 x 96 cm. Private Collection, New York
PA R T 2
Observations on Titian’s “Raczynski Herodias”1 The very recent cleaning of this painting2 and the removal of various repaints (figs. 1, 2) has clarified its state and has modified some of the impressions I formed when I first studied it in London (July 2018). It is obvious that this painting, like the similar pictures in Tokyo and Detroit, is unequally finished. Parts of the central woman’s dress and her arms were formerly over-worked, her right arm less so than her left. X-rays showed, and the new restoration reveals, more movement in her right hand, which was simplified in the surface that I saw—it now corresponds more closely to the Tokyo version. Indeed, the transformation of quality in the arms is considerable and they have gained both skin texture and fleshly vitality. Originally, in a clear pentiment, her right sleeve came lower down her forearm, and bracelets circled both her right and left wrists. There is a change to her collar and it is likely that there was initially a ruff around her neck, the traces of which are more visible above her right shoulder than her left; this was seemingly scraped out and re-worked. Her pearl necklace tried in two positions, a common characteristic of Titian’s pictures of women, both portraits and belle and there are also pearls in her hair. The left forearm of the page boy at lower left was at first tried extended along the lower edge of the picture, but was then changed to its present position; the first idea was taken up in the Tokyo picture (fig. 3). Otherwise, the lower third of the picture, which contains the head
Fig. 2 Titian,the “Raczynski Herodias,” 1540s– 70, 1560–70, oil on canvas, 114 x 96 cm. Postcleaning
Fig. 1 Titian,the “Raczynski Herodias,” 1540s–70, oil on canvas, 114 x 96 cm. Pre-cleaning
and trencher, was left more or less untouched.The blurred forms in this area of the x-ray indicate that the head was tried in several positions. The central woman’s dress was initially intended to be more elaborate, and traces of pleating and piping can be seen near the shoulders that fade away below: this is clearest at the viewer’s left. In the x-ray and
Fig. 3 Titian,the “Raczynski Herodias,” (detail) 1540s–70, oil on canvas, 114 x 96 cm. Post-restoration
now as restored, it can be seen that the folds of the upper part of her dress are more complex than they are on the surface, and they seem to have been developed from those in the Leopold William version. Titian planned a more elaborate dress, stretched and somewhat simplified over her breasts, to which woven buttons down the front of her dress would have added further richness. But both the continuity and contrast between pleated and stretched areas were, in the end, treated more summarily, possibly by a studio assistant at a later date. Thus it might be noted that her chemise rather collides with her pearls, and it may be that Titian had left this area unresolved. However, it should be emphasised that artificial light exaggerates this areas’s internal discrepancies and when seen under daylight it is more homogeneous and more impressive, with less of a disjunction between her face and breast. On the right-hand side of the picture is a view through an arch, whose brickwork or stonework can be made out, onto sky which seems to contain clouds, but these were developed into a lightly laid-in male head whose hair partly overlays the arch. This head, which is obviously intended to be that of Herod, is, I think, original but it was a lastminute addition by Titian—there is no sign of it in the x-ray image. His white hair balances the patches of white at the left-hand side of the
painting, which presumably indicate moonlight behind clouds, although this area likewise was never fully resolved. The veiled figure on the left seems to be that of a young woman—at least younger than the central woman—as everyone I consulted agreed. In the Leopold William version, as far as we can know it in Teniers’ copy, this woman looks older. Here, light falls on the tip of her nose: this is a device employed by Titian from his earliest years but, as Andrea Donati has pointed out, there is a strong similarity to the head left above the Virgin in Titian’s Pentecost, painted shortly after 1550. My impression is that this picture was laid in about the same time as a version of the same composition which underlays the Prado’s portrait of Isabella of Portugal, that is during the later 1540s. I have seen the unpublished x-ray of the Prado and it broadly corresponds to the “Raczynski Herodias.” Both paintings were developed from the version that we know from Teniers’ copy and the connection is reinforced by the fact that the colour—and to some extent the form—of the central figure’s dress in the present picture is like that of Leopold William’s picture. It seems to me likely that the dress and ruff were worked on for a while ca. 1550 and that the painting was then laid aside. My impression is that Titian returned to it in the 1560s when, I would guess, he experimented with the position of the head on the platter. This severed head seems to have been a particular interest to Titian in this composition for its placement is different in three of the known versions of the subject (i.e. “Raczynski,” “Leopold William,” and “Tokyo;” that beneath Isabella in the Prado is not clear). He may have begun to simplify the central woman’s dress at this time, and I suspect that the scrapings-out were his decision, but he left the picture unfinished and unresolved, to be finished by another hand. When the overworking took place is conjectural, but in my view it dates from Titian’s lifetime. There used to be what looked like a later attempt to “finish” the painting but the recent cleaning has shown this to be twentieth-century restoration. As remarked above, all three of the surviving paintings under discussion are unequal in their degree of execution. Put simply, while
Fig. 4 Titian, the “Raczynski Herodias,” (detail) 1540s–70, oil on canvas, 114 x 96 cm. Postrestoration. Private Collection, New York
large areas of the three paintings are freely handled and, by Titian’s standards, unfinished, the faces in all three are brought to a higher level of finish (figs. 4, 5, and 6). And in all, the faces are of similar type and a little simplified when compared with those certainly by Titian. This is not to say they are radically different in style from his work, but the consistency of their features suggests to me that all three heads were “finished” by the same artist, probably under Titian’s supervision. The rest of the paintings were left at different levels of finish. In some parts, of the Tokyo painting, notably the jewels on the shoulder, the straps etc, are highly finished and of excellent quality, but it is very much neglected in others. Of course, this may be the result of relatively recent cleaning, but this seems to be an accurate record of the painting’s final state. In the Detroit picture,3 the drapery and lower part of the figure was taken further and I have no reason to doubt that in these areas it is entirely by Titian’s own hand but whether later overworking was removed at some stage, I do not know.
Fig. 5 Titian, Salome with the Head of St. John the Baptist (detail), oil on canvas, 90 x 83.3 cm. P.2011-0002 © The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo. Post-restoration Fig. 6 Titian, Judith with the Head of Holofernes (detail), ca. 1570, oil on canvas, 113 x 95.3 cm. 35.10 Gift of Edsel B. Ford. Detroit Institute of Arts © Bridgeman Images
My hypothesis about these features is that the ageing Titian turned over all three pictures to an assistant to complete the faces. He may have felt that the rest of the Detroit picture was taken sufficiently far to be sent out. But it seems unlikely that he felt this to be true of the other two. We can no longer reconstruct exactly the stages of execution and cleaning of the Tokyo picture and, as far as I know, no technical report has been published on the work, but there, in the original paint layers, the arms are obviously unfinished, as they are, after restoration, in the Raczynski picture.
To summarise I think that there were two interventions apart from Titian’s own work: one in the face of Herodias—and in parts of the bodice—of high quality; the other, now removed, in the arms, by a restorer whose expressive command of gesture was rather poor. There were, of course, various other retouches to cover damage etc and some of these have been replaced. But as it exists at present, after restoration, in my view the painting is entirely autograph save for the finishing of the face and some work on the bodice. 1
2
3
Provenance: The Counts Lubormirski; The Counts Raczynski, Rogalin Castle, Poland, by descent; Ambassador Roger Raczynski; Private collection, Zurich, 1969; Private collection, New York. Literature: Antonio Morassi, “Una Salomè di Tiziano riscoperta,” Pantheon, 1968, vol. 26, pp. 456–66, reproduced pp. 458–463 (as Titian, 1560–1570); Corrado Cagli and Francesco Valcanover, L’Opera completa di Tiziano, Milan, 1969, no. 490 (as Titian 1560–70); Rodolfo Pallucchini, Tiziano, Florence, 1969, vol. I, page 318; reproduced vol. II, plates 488–89 (as Titian, c. 1560–65); Harold E. Wethey,Titian:The Religious Paintings, 1969, p. 95, no. 44.1 (as Judith or Salome); Oliver Millar, “The Inventories of the King’s Goods,” TheWalpole Society, 1972, vol. 43, p. 190, no. 78; Terisio Pignatti, Titian: Every Painting, 1981, vol. 2, p. 318, reproduced p. 56, no. 440 (as Titian, 1567–68); JeanPatrice Marandel, in Titian, Prince of Painters, exh. cat., Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, 1990–91, p. 352, under no. 69; F. Valcanover, in Le siècle de Titien: L’Age d’or de la peinture àVenise, exh. cat., Paris, Grand Palais, 1993, under no. 260; Peter Humfrey, et al., The Age of Titian:Venetian Renaissance Art from Scottish Collections, exh. cat., Edinburgh, National Galleries of Scotland, 2004, p. 178, no. 65. Peter Humfrey, Titian:The Complete Paintings, London, 2007, p. 329, under no. 256 (as “apparently of workshop quality”); Stefan Albl, ed. Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, Der Späte Tizian und Die Sinnlichkeit der Malerei, exh. cat., Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, 2007–08 and Venice, Galleria dell’Accademia, 2008, under no. 3.17, pp. 338–340. The recent cleaning was undertaken by Dianne Modestini at the Conservation Center of the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. I am indebted to her for her thoughtful interpretation of the x-rays of the “Raczynski Herodias.” The Detriot Judith is currently undergoing conservation. It was formerly conserved by William Suhr who is known to have been an enthusiatic “improver” of paintings. This may well have not been the case here, but the removal of Suhr’s overpaint will be instructive.
Gustav Klimt, Judith (and the head of Holofernes), 1901, oil on canvas, 84 x 42 cm.Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna © Bridgeman Images
Herodias, Salome, and Judith: Their Stories and Some Literary Interpretations Ian Kennedy The stories of Herodias, Salome, and Judith, all responsible for the punitive decapitation of men,have long attracted writers and artists. Herodias was the wife of Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee at the time of Christ’s trial and crucifixion. According to St Mark’s gospel she had previously been married to Philip, Herod’s half brother, but left him to marry Herod. John the Baptist condemned the marriage as unlawful, which convinced Herodias that he must be silenced. This she achieved by having Salome, her daughter by her marriage to Philip, perform a seductive dance in Herod’s presence, then ask for the Baptist’s head on a charger. Herod, reluctant but infatuated, could not refuse her. In his short story Herodias, from Trois Contes (Three Tales), Gusatve Flaubert vividly portrays the Baptist pitching into Herodias, who had got him locked up by Herod for attacking her marriage. Then follows a suitably alluring account of Salome dancing. Another well-known account of Salome appears in A Rebours (Against Nature), a decadent aesthetic novel by J. K. Huysmans. The author describes how his hero des Esseintes reacts to a painting called The Apparition by the Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau. This depicts Salome terrified by an apparition of the Baptist’s head hovering before her. The story of Judith and Holofernes is taken from the apocryphal book of Judith. Unlike Herodias and Salome, they are fictional not historical characters. The story unfolds around the Jewish city of Bethulia, under seige by the Assyrians. The inhabitants are about to capitulate so Judith, a rich and beautiful widow, sets off with her maid for the Assyrian lines. Dressed to kill, she gains access to the Assyrian commander Holofernes by suggesting a plan to capture the town. She then gets him drunk, strikes off his head, puts the head in a sack and carries it back to Bethulia. When the Assyrians discover Holofernes’ fate, they throw in the towel and flee, pursued by the Israelites. Below is an extract from a poem Judith and Holofernes of 1896 by the American writer Thomas Bailey Aldrich, a long-term editor of the Atlantic Monthly. Aldrich also wrote a play on the subject called Judith of Bethulia, which inspired a film of the same name by the pioneering director D. W. Griffith. Released in 1914, the film is important in the history of the cinema as the first feature-length silent film.
Paul Delaroche, Herodias with the Head of St. John the Baptist (detail), 1843, oil on canvas, 129 x 98 cm. WRM 1093. Wallraf–Richartz Museum, Cologne © Painters / Alamy Stock Photo
HERODIAS From Three Tales (Trois Contes), 1877 Gustave Flaubert trans. Roger Whitehouse, Penguin Classics, 2005
This man was fearsome to behold. Throwing his head back, he grasped the bars of the grating and pressed his face against it. They saw what looked like a tangle of brushwood with two burning coals glowing in its midst. “Ah! It is you, Jezebel! You who stole his heart by the squeak in your shoe! You whinnied like a mare. You set up your bed on the mountaintops to perform your oblations! But the Lord shall tear away your earrings, your purple robes and your linen veils, the bracelets on your arms, the rings about your feet and the little golden crescents that quiver on your brow, your silver mirrors, your fans of ostrich plumes and the mother-of-pearl pattens which make you seem so tall, your proud display of diamonds, the scents in your hair, the paint on your nails and all the false adornments of your womanhood. There are not enough rocks in all the world for the stoning of adultery like yours” “Prostrate yourself in the dust, O daughter of Babylon! Grind your own meal! Loosen your girdle, take off your shoes, hitch up your skirts and wade through the stream! Your shame shall be seen and your disgrace made known to all! You shall weep with anguish and your teeth shall break in your mouth! The Lord abhors the stench of your crimes! Cursed and twice cursed! May you die like a bitch!” Suddenly the panels in the golden balcony were folded back and Herodias appeared in a blaze of candlelight, surrounded by slaves and festoons of anemones. On her head she wore an Assyrian mitre held in place by a chin strap. Her hair fell in long ringlets onto a scarlet peplum which was split down the length of each sleeve. Standing as she was between two monstrous creatures carved in stone that stood on either side of the doorway like those attending the treasure of Atreus, she looked like Cybele with her attendant lions. She stood on the balcony directly above Antipas, holding a patera between both hands, and declaimed:
“Long live Caesar!” At the same time, from the far end of the hall, came a buzz of surprise and admiration. A young girl had just come in. A blue-tinted veil covered her head and breasts. Through it could be glimpsed the curve of her ears and the whiteness of her body. A drape of dove-coloured silk fell from her shoulders and was fastened about her thighs with a jewelled girdle. She wore dark-coloured trousers embellished with mandrakes. She moved forward with languid grace, tapping the floor with her tiny slippers of humming-bird’s down. She went on to the platform and slipped off her veil. It might have been Herodias, as she used to be in her youth. The she began to dance. Her feet moved rhythmically one in front of the other to the sounds of a flute and a pair of hand cymbals. She extended her arms in a circle, as if she were calling to someone who was fleeing at her approach. She ran after him, light as a butterfly, like Psyche in search of her lover, a soul adrift, as if she were about to take flight. The sound of cymbals gave way to the more somber notes of the flute. Hope had ceded to grief. Her movements now suggested sighs and her whole body took on an attitude of such languor that one could not tell whether she was mourning a departed god or expiring in his embrace. With her eyes half-closed, she swiveled her waist, thrust her belly backwards and forwards in rhythmic waves and made her breasts quiver; her face remains expressionless but her feet never stopped moving. The dance continued, now depicting the lover’s yearning for satisfaction. She danced like the priestesses of the Indies, like the Nubian girls of the cataracts, like the bacchantes of Lydia. Her body twisted in every direction like a flower buffeted by the storm. . . . A harp played sweet music and the crowd responded with shouts of acclamation. Without bending her knees, she spread her legs apart and inclined her body so low that her chin touched the floor. Nomads weaned on abstinence, Roman soldiers practiced in debauchery, mean-minded publicans and priests embittered by religious wrangling, all looked on, their nostrils dilated, quivering with desire.
Next she danced in a circle around the Tetrarch’s table, spinning wildly on her feet like a humming-top of a sorceress. ‘Come to my arms!’ cried Antipas, in a voice choking with passion. She continued to dance before him, while the drums beat furiously and the crowd roared. The Tetrarch’s voice rose above the din. “Come to my arms! You shall have Capernaum! The plain of Tiberias! All my citadels! Half my kingdom!” She threw herself on her hands with her heels in the air and in this pose she crossed from one side of the platform to the other like an enormous beetle. Then suddenly she stood absolutely still. Her neck and spine formed a perfect right angle. The coloured silks which she wore about her legs fell down over her shoulders like rainbows and encircled her face just a few inches above the ground. Her lips were painted red, her eyebrows black; she had startling dark eyes; tiny beads of sweat clung to her brow like droplets of water on white marble. She said nothing. She and the Tetrarch looking into each other’s eyes. There was a snapping of fingers from the balcony above. She went up to the balcony and then came back to stand in front of Antipas. With a look of childish innocence and a slight lisp in her voice she spoke the following words: “I want you to give me on a plate the head of . . .’ She had forgotten the name. Then, with a smile, she continued: ‘The head of Jokanaan!”
Gustave Moreau, The Apparition, ca. 1876, watercolor, 72.2 x 106 cm. Musée d’Orsay, Paris © RMN (Musée d’Orsay) / Jean-Gilles Berizzi
SALOME From Against Nature (A Rebours), 1884 Joris-Kari Huysmans trans. Robert Baldick, Penguin Classics, 2003
In this picture, Herod’s palace rose up like some Alhambra on slender columns iridescent with Moresque tiles . . . arabesques started from lozenges of lapis lazuli to wind their way right across the cupolas, whose mother-of-pearl marquetry gleamed with rainbow lights and flashed with prismatic fires. The murder had been done; now the executioner stood impassive, his hands resting on the pommel of his long, blood-stained sword. The Saint’s severed head had left the charger where it lay on the flagstones and risen into the air, the eyes staring out from the livid face, the colourless lips parted, the crimson neck dripping tears of blood. A mosaic encircled the face, and also a halo of light whose rays darted out under the porticoes, emphasized the awful elevation of the head, and kindled a fire in the glassy eyeballs, which were fixed in what happened to be the agonized concentration on the dancer. With a gesture of horror, Salome thrusts away the terrifying vision which holds her nailed to the spot, balanced on the tips of her toes, her eyes dilated, her right hand clawing convulsively at her throat. She is almost naked; in the heat of the dance her veils have fallen away and her brocade robes slipped to the floor, so that now she is clad only in wrought metals and transluscent gems. A gorgerin grips her waist like a corselet, and like an outsize clasp a wondrous jewel sparkles and flashes between her breasts; lower down, a girdle encircles her hips, hiding the upper part of her thighs, against which dangles a gigantic pendant glistening with rubies and emeralds; finally, where the body shows bare between gorgerin and girdle, the belly bulges out, dimpled by a navel which resembles a graven seal of onyx with its milky hues and its rosy finger-nail tints.
Under the brilliant rays emanating from the Precursor’s head, every facet of every jewel catches fire; the stones burn brightly, outlining the woman’s figure in flaming colours, indicating neck, legs and arms with points of light, red as burning coals, violet as jets of gas, blue as flaming alcohol, white as moonbeams. The dreadful head glows eerily, bleeding all the while, so that the clots of dark red form at the ends of hair and beard. Visible to Salome alone, it embraces in its sinister gaze neither Herodias, musing over the ultimate satisfaction of her hatred, nor the Tetrarch, who, bending forward a little with his hands on his knees, is still panting with emotion, maddened by the sight and smell of the woman’s naked body, steeped in musky scents, anointed with aromatic balms, impregnated with incense and myrrh. Like the old King, Des Esseintes invariably felt overwhelmed, subjugated, stunned when he looked at this dancing girl, who was less majestic, less haughty, but more seductive than the Salome of the oilpainting. In the unfeeling and unpitying statue, in the innocent and deadly idol, the lusts and fears of common humanity had been awakened; the great lotus-blossom had disappeared, the goddess vanished; a hideous nightmare now held in its choking grip an entertainer, intoxicated by the whirling movement of the dance, a courtesan, petrified and hypnotized by terror. Here she was a true harlot, obedient to her passionate and cruel female temperament; here she came to life, more refined yet more savage, more hateful yet more exquisite than before; here she roused the sleeping senses of the male more powerfully, subjugated his will more surely with her charms- the charms of a great venereal flower, grown in a bed of sacrilege, reared in a hot-house of impiety.
Franz von Stuck, Judith and Holofernes, 1926, oil on canvas, 157 x 83 cm. Staatliches Museum, Schwerin © Album / Alamy Stock Photo
JUDITH From Judith and Holofernes, a poem, 1896 Thomas Bailey Aldrich Forgotten Books, 2015
Judith set forth the viands for the prince; Upon a stand at the low couch’s side Laid grapes and apricots, and poured the wine, And while he ate she held the jeweled cup, Nor failed to fill it to the silver’s edge Each time he drank; and the red vintage seemed More rich to him because of her soft hands And the gold bangle that slipt down her wrist. Now, in the compass of his thirty years In no one day had he so drank wine… At last all things lost sequence in his mind; And in a dream he saw her take the lute And hold it to her bosom while she sang; And in a dream he listened to the songA folklore legend of an ancient king, The first on earth that ever did taste wine, Who drank, and from him cast a life-long grief As’t were a faded mantle. Like a mist The music drifted from the silvery strings… The ceasing of the music broke the drowse, Half broke the drowse, of the dazed prince, who cried: “Give me the drink! And thou, take thou the cup! Fair Judith, ‘t is a medicine that cures; Grief will it cure and every ill, save love,” And as he spoke, he stoopt to kiss the hand That held the chalice; but the cressets swam In front of him, and all within the tent Grew strange and blurred, and from the place he sat He sank, and fell upon the camel-skins,
Supine, inert, bound fast in bands of wine. And Judith looked on him, and pity crept Into her bosom. The ignoble sleep Robbed not his pallid brow of majesty Nor from the curved lip took away the scorn; These rested still. Like some Chaldean god Thrown from its fane, he lay there at her feet. O broken sword of proof! O prince betrayed! Her he had trusted, he who trusted none. The sharp thought pierced her, and her breast was torn, And half she longed to bid her purpose die, To stay, to weep, to kneel down at his side And let her long hair trail upon his face. Then Judith dared not look him more Lest she should lose her reason through her eyes; And with her palms she covered up her eyes To shut him out; but from that subtler sight Within, she could not shut him, and so stood. Then suddenly there fell upon her ear The moan of children moaning in the streets And throngs of famished women swept her by, Wringing their wasted hands, and all the woes Of the doomed city pleaded at her heart. As if she were within the very walls These things she heard and saw. With hurried breath Judith blew out the lights, all lights save one, And from its nail the heavy falchion took, And with both hands tight clasped upon the hilt Thrice smote the Prince of Asshur as he lay, Thrice on the neck she smote him as he lay, Then from her flung the cruel curved blade That in the air an instant flashed, and fell.
ďœ´ďœ˛
Paul Joannides
Paul Joannides is Emeritus Professor of Art History at the University of Cambridge, where he taught for many years. He has published widely on various aspects of the Italian Renaissance, with a particular emphasis on the oeuvres of Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian. He has also worked on French late 18th and early 19th century topics. Books and Catalogues relating to Titian Titian to 1518:The Assumption of Genius, 2002 “Titian and Michelangelo/Michelangelo and Titian,” in The Cambridge Companion to Titian, ed. by P. Meilman, Cambridge and New York, 2003–04, pp. 121–145. “Titian’s Repetitions,” in Titian: Materiality, Likeness, Istoria, ed. by J. Woods-Marsden, Turnhout, 2007, pp. 37–51. San Sebastiano: Bellezza e integrità nell’arte tra Quattrocento e Seicento, Castello di Miradolo, San Secondo di Pinerolo, 4 October 2014–8 March 2015, ed. by V. Sgarbi and A. D’Amico, Milan, 2014 (cat. entry 13: Titian: St Sebastian). Dánae yVenus y Adonis: las primeras «poesías» de Tiziano para Felipe II, Miguel Falomir, with the participation of Paul Joannides and Elisa Mora, Madrid, 2014 Articles relating to Titian “My favourite work” [Titian’s Tarquin and Lucretia], Varsity, no. 578, 7 March 2003, p. a12. “Titian in London and Madrid,” Paragone, 657, November 2004, pp. 3–30. “Titian and the Extract,” Studi Tizianeschi, 4, 2006, pp. 135–148. ‘“A Boy with a Bird’ in the National Gallery: Two Responses to a Titian Question,” National Gallery Technical Bulletin, Vol. 28, 2007, pp. 36-57 “Giulio and Titian” [Letter], Master Drawings, 47, 2, Summer 2009, p. 237.
“Titian’s Vienna ‘Mars and Venus:’ Its Lost Pendant and a Variant,” Paragone, 721, March, 2010, pp. 3–27. “Titian, Giorgione and the Mystery of Paris,” Artibus et Historiae, 61, 2010, pp. 99–114. “A Portrait of ‘Girolamo Fracastoro’ by Titian in the National Gallery,” (with J. Dunkerton and J. Fletcher), The Burlington Magazine, vol. 155, no. 1318, January 2013, pp. 4–15. “A Portrait by Titian of Girolamo Cornaro,” Artibus et Historiae, 67, 2013, pp. 239–249. “A Painting by Titian from the Spanish Royal Collection at Apsley House,” (with R. Featherstone), Hamilton Kerr Institute Bulletin, 5, 2014, pp. 66–79. “An Attempt to Situate Titian’s Paintings of the Penitent Magdalen in Some Kind of Order,” Artibus et Historiae, 73, 2016, pp. 157–194. “Titian’s ‘Danaë:’ The Debate Continues,” (with M. Falomir), The Burlington Magazine, vol. 1359, no. 158, June 2016, pp. 415–419. “Titian’s Rokeby Venus and Adonis and the Role of Working Templates,” (with J. S. Turner), Studi Tizianeschi, 9, 2014 (published in 2016), pp. 48–76. ‘‘Titian’s Mistress’ at Apsley House,” (with S. Bayliss and A. Tate-Harte), Hamilton Kerr Institute Bulletin, 6, 2016, pp. 83–92.
NICHOLAS HALL Established in 2016, Nicholas Hall is an appointment-only gallery on the Upper East Side of New York. The gallery deals in museumquality works by European artists from the 13th to mid-20th century and provides bespoke advisory services for the discerning collector. Before founding his eponymous gallery, Nicholas was the International Chairman of the Old Master and Nineteenth-Century Departments at Christie’s. His first gallery, Hall & Knight Ltd., was acquired by Christie’s in 2004.
Selected Museums with works of art acquired through Nicholas Hall Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit The Frick Collection, New York J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth Louvre Museum, Paris Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa National Gallery, London Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh Timken Museum of Art, San Diego Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven
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Metamorphosis: Liu Dan’s Fantastic Landscape and the Renaissance Paintings by Carlo Maratti Procaccini in America A Taste for Italian Art in Holland Fearful Symmetry: George Stubbs: Painter of the English Enlightenment Colnaghi in America: Old Masters in a New World
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detail, pages 2 and 10: Titian, Herodias with the Head of St. John the Baptist, 1540s–70, oil on canvas, 114 x 96 cm. Private Collection, New York © 2018 Nicholas Hall and Paul Joannides isbn: 978-1-7326492-2-4 All rights reserved No part of this catalogue may reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of research or private study, or criticism and review. Design: Lawrence Sunden, Inc. Printing: The Studley Press