Art History Today

The Malmesbury Judgement of Paris: the Full Picture, 2.

On one occasion, back in the dim and distant 1990s, the late lamented scholar, perhaps the last of the great modern connoisseurs, Sir Denis Mahon, used the metaphor of an edifice or an architectural structure to describe Poussin’s development.* When confronted with certain pictures that he thought didn’t fit into the edifice, he was apt to reject them and banish them to another art history building site. The metaphor is a neat one: structural features that don’t fit could lead to the whole building crashing down, or tilting at an angel like an art historical Tower of Pisa. I must confess that the idea of the edifice came to me when I first saw the Malmesbury Judgment of Paris. My initial reaction was that it looked too “Venetian” and therefore it couldn’t fit into Raphael’s stylistic development or edifice. However, after reading more on the subject, pondering all the material sent to me by Graeme Cameron, and thinking about the comments of another Raphael scholar- incidentally, also a Poussin scholar interested in stylistic progression- Konrad Oberhuber, I began to learn more about what Oberhuber, and other leading Raphael scholars were calling Raphael’s Venetian, even Giorgionesque phase, which coincides with the date of the Malmesbury Judgement of Paris, historically attributed to Giorgione. It’s a difficult idea to convey since it involves a whole raft of stylistic, cultural, even sociological factors, all of which can be called for the sake of convenience the Rome/Venice nexus.

Raphael Studies and the Rome/Venice Nexus.

Sebastiano del Piombo, The Death of Adonis. Probably painted in Rome after Sebastiano had arrived from Venice in 1511 with Agostino Chigi. Ducal Palace, Venice in background..

 

The connections between Roman and Venetian art has a long history, usefully discussed by Patricia Fortini Brown (Venice and Antiquity: The Venetian Sense of the Past), but what was the relationship between the two cities in the period in which the Malmesbury picture is said to have evolved- 1510-12. More relevantly, what was the conduit through which Venetian ideas about painting were passed to Raphael and his workshop? A recent essay by Costanza Barbieri in 2005 has considered the links between Raphael’s and Sebastiano’s painting in Rome, and also linked it with patrons for whom both artists worked. As Barbieri points out, Agostini Chigi who commissioned the frescoes in the Loggia della Galatea, brought Sebastiano from Rome in 1511. Due to loans to the Vatican, Chigi had become superintendent of papal finances and was a farmer of an alum monopoly- probably the richest private gentleman in Italy at that time.As Barbieri plausibly said, in Venice, Chigi could have looked at the “facades of Venetian palaces”, particularly the Fondaco dei Tedeschi painted by Giorgione and Titian, now only known through copies and fragments. It was Barbieri’s view that it may have been as a result of viewing these frescoes that Chigi decided to bring Sebastiano- Giorgione’s pupil- to Rome to work on his villa, although it could be that Sebastiano thought he would have a better chance of advancing, away from the competitive milieu of Venice and Chigi was his passport. According to the Chigi family archives, (1618-30), Agostino met the painter in Venice and brought him with him to Rome in 1511 but “travelled very little after his youthful days.” On arrival in Rome, Sebastiano would have been the most important channel for the communication of Venetian painting, “the representative of the Venetian style in Rome.” Although nothing is known about the intended program of the Loggia, it may have been a competition situation with stylistic battle lines being drawn. As a result of this commission, and given Chigi’s Venetian links, Raphael learnt about Venetian technique; colours were imported from Venice, with Raphael even sending members of his workshop there to collect them. Although Raphael’s Galatea trumps Sebastiano with its classicism and its “archaeological and classical appearance” , to use Barbieri’s words, that scholar did believe that Raphael “looked at Sebastiano’s colour technique with interest close to emulation.” 

 

Sebastiano, Polyphemous and Raphael, Galatea, Villa Farnesina, both 1511. It is not known which came first, although it is likely to have been Sebastiano.

 

This interest in the Venetian influence on Raphael has been evolving since the late 1980s.** Carlo Pedretti said of the Sistine Madonna: “It appears with the technique of oil on canvas Raphael was after the chromatic effects of the Venetians.” More relevantly, in 1999, Oberhuber referred to a new phase in Venetian influence and “colour shift” involving “Giorgionesque richness…” going on to say “….and in other works we will see that Raphael had not overlooked what Chigi had brought with him from Venice.” This topic of Raphael and Venetian art had solidified by the time of the 2004 exhibition in London with Tom Henry observing that “Sebastiano may well have brought some completed paintings with him, and Raphael probably sought him out and studied his work as soon as he arrived.” One of these may have been Sebastiano’s Death of Adonis, which AHT suggested in an earlier post Raphael must have seen. It is a transitional work because it blends Venetian colorito with the statuesque grandeur of Michelangelo. Also, the inclusion of the Ducal Palace in Venice serves to underline the link with that city. Barbieri’s essay drew all these scholarly thoughts and strands together, but with the focus on how Raphael’s stylistic preferences were formed out of his study of Giorgione and Sebastiano.

 

Raphael, Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, Louvre, c. 1514.

 

There was already a context for this since the author of a book on renaissance colour, as well as the editor of the Raphael Cambridge volume, Marcia Hall, argued that the technique of Sebastiano’s Polyphemous may have inspired the “unifying effects” in Raphael’s School of Athens of 1511-12 (noted by Barbieri). The preparation of the wall in the Venetian way resulted in “purplish grey tint to the intonaco.” Wether this is borne out by the restoration of the Loggia , which may have ended now as the rooms are open to the public, remains to be seen. Barbieri observes that this hands-on research will add “important information about concerning the stylistic development of Raphael.” In a technical discussion of Sebastiano’s painting, Barbieri also noted the influence of Venetian glazing technique on Raphael’s Portrait of Castiglione, of about 1514 whose painting technique “using thin layers of superimposing colours to obtain the final hue” was similar to Venetian methods analysed in renaissance treatises on the art of painting.

 

Raphael, detail from The Liberation of St Peter, Vatican, Stanza di Elidoro, 1514.	Sebastiano del Piombo, Pieta, 1516, Museo Civico, Viterbo.

 

It was also believed by Barbieri that the dazzling light effects in the magnificent fresco of the Liberation of St Peter, may have been influenced by Sebastiano’s Viterbo Pietà, current with the fresco. According to Barbieri, a lost Giorgione painting (Self-Portrait as Orpheus) had similar notte effects- a demand for these night scenes may have been created by patrons. This author speculates about Raphael learning about night time effects from prints such as Marcantonio Raimondi’s “Il Morbetto”, but is inclined to believe that Raphael’s knowledge of these light effects came from Venice, especially Giorgione’s experiments.

 

Malmesbury Judgement, 1512.

 

One of the claims of the compilers of the research summary on the Malmesbury J of Paris is that this picture shows Raphael’s absorption of Giorgione: “it was Raphael’s unique ability to absorb and adapt other master artist’s styles that has led to its profound Venetian and ”Giorgionesque” appearance.” (Cameron). We know that Raphael was a great synthesiser of other painter’s styles and ideas, but does it therefore follow that the Malmesbury painting is by his hand, albeit in a “Giorgionesque” manner? This incorporation of other painting styles has been noted on occasion by Raphael scholars. In the catalogue to the 2004 Raphael exhibition, Tom Henry and Carol Plazzota relevantly stated that Raphael assimilated various styles but also established his own; “He was quick to appreciate quality and absorb innovation, adapting and improving the inventions of other masters with incredible ease.” Yet none of these scholars has noted the significance of the Malmesbury painting, which the authors claim is explained by its attribution to Giorgione for 500 centuries. Centuries of attribution certainly are a stumbling block to accepting the current identification, which is one of the main challenges facing its supporters. Yet, to be fair to the authors, it should be pointed out that Oberhuber, a compiler of a Raphael catalogue of pictures, and a scholar fascinated by artistic development, did point out that “The larger picture of Raphael’s output has not been fully painted.” Oberhuber believed that certain works of Raphael “delicate and more finely executed products” remained “unrecognised.” Had Oberhuber not died in 2007, it would have been interesting to see if he would have admitted the Malmesbury Judgment of Paris into this small enclave of overlooked works. As it stands, it remains to be seen how this scholarship develops in the future, or if it turns out to be a cul-de-sac in Raphael studies.

Nuancing Stylistic Growth in Raphael’s Art.

What exactly was Oberhuber trying to say here? He was formulating a project which depended more on the micro analysis of paintings rather than the allocation of stylistic factors to broad swathes of Raphael’s development; an approach that hasn’t customarily troubled Raphael scholarship, though this relates to other painters as well. Traditional connoisseurship has relied more on determining stylistic homology between groups of paintings rather than the microanalysis that Oberhuber was seeking. There had been hints of this interest in the nuances of stylistic growth before Oberhuber though. Cecil Gould, in a 1982 article considered the problem of the authorship of Raphael’s paintings, particularly those attributed to Guilio Romano. Gould ventured that Raphael’s oeuvre was more varied than hitherto thought; the painter varied his manner in nearly every picture, which Gould observed created “obvious problems of connoisseurship, even in the years when he was painting pictures just by himself.”

To keep this in balance, Gould was considering late Raphael when his workshop had been established rather than the period of 1510-12 when the Roman workshop was establishing itself. Nevertheless, , the problem of authorship is clearly germane to the earlier Roman period as the controversial re-appearance of either copies of Raphael’s Portrait of Julius II by his own hand or the workshop show. The essential point to grasp here is that technical notes about colour made by scholars such as Hall, Barbieri and Oberhuber do point to a less uniformly stylistic development and to a variegated evolution due to influences that Raphael encountered in this period, which have yet to be assimilated into the study of Raphael’s paintings. This is clearly one of the main problems that supporters of the Malmesbury attribution face: it’s difficult to even get interested parties to grasp the context of a Rome/Venice nexus and its effect on Raphael’s development, let alone persuade decriers to support the attribution. However, once this stylistic diversity advocated by leading Raphael scholars is accepted, it then becomes fair to consider whether this stylistic fluctuation is accounted for by Raphael studying painters like Giorgione, or at least the School of Venice’s works disseminated in Rome in that crucial period of 1510-12. It is a matter of record that from 1510 onwards Raphael had access to Venetian styles through the pupils of Giorgione, Sebastiano del Piombo and maybe even Titian. In 2004, Henry speculated about Raphael having the chance to see early works of Titian “which may have reached Rome by this time.” This begs the obvious question: how could the Malmesbury J of Paris fit into this stylistic intersection of Roman and Venetian art? If we create a new edifice consisting of “Venetian” and Central Italian styles, then where would the Malmesbury canvas be located in the structure?

The Influence of Giorgione and the Venetian School on the Malmesbury Painting.

Giorgione and Titian, Concert Champetre, Louvre, 1508-9.	Malmesbury Judgement, 1512.

 

The obvious Venetian painting to compare the Malmesbury picture to is the Concert Champetre, whose attribution gauge registers equally with Titian and Giorgione, though it’s more likely to reflect a confluence of influences in early cinquecento Venice, even Sebastiano for some scholars. This beautiful picture epitomises the Arcadian ideal, and it explains partly why the Malmesbury Judgement has been assigned to Giorgione since it possesses the same atmosphere of drowsy pastoral lyricism, though this is slightly qualified by an identifiable mythological subject which works against the poetic abstraction. The authors of the Raphael research summary perceive a link not only between the Louvre Concert, but also the canonical Tempest by Giorgione, so we have three paintings- a triangle of works with the Louvre Concert as its apex. One angle of this triangle, Giorgione’s Tempesta is too vast a subject to deal with here, although specific characteristics have been claimed between it and the Malmesbury Judgement.

 

Comparisons of Malmesbury Paris with contemporary figures in Concert Champetre and Tempesta. (Graeme Cameron)

 

In his Secrets of Leonardo da Vinci Vol. 1, Graeme Cameron said that the seated figure in the Malmesbury painting was “reminiscent of the standing figure in Giorgione’s Tempesta.” AHT claims no expert knowledge of renaissance costume; it merely notes similarities between the dress, -“the parti-coloured tights and plumes and slashes of the sixteenth-century”, to use Crowe and Cavalcaselle’s words- worn by figures in all three paintings We can also add an observation of Frank DeStefano made to AHT after posting the first report in this series. He points out that in the 1999 Giorgione catalogue edited by Pedrocco and Pignatti, a picture they attribute to Giorgione, a "Rustic Idyll" seems to have stylistic links with the Malmesbury J of Paris. This will need to be checked when the libraries re-open, but this 12x19cm panel pictures a young man with a woman who holds an infant. DeStefano observes that the costume of the man in this painting is “remarkably similar to the one worn by Paris in the Judgments.” On a related point- which takes us back to Joannides, Frank DeStefano says that he originally thought this picture was a Rest on the Flight into Egypt, but now believes it could be depicting the story of Paris and Oenone, suggesting the influence of humanists in Venice. In passing, the importance of the treatment of the J of Paris in the Rome/Venice nexus should not be overlooked here. As Joannides said in his article on Titian, Giorgione and Paris, more research is needed on the relationship of poetry and painting in the humanist culture of Venice

“Much investigation remains to be carried out on the interaction of poetry and painting in Venice around 1500 and it is likely that only a systematic appraisal of vernacular literature, and perhaps poems and stories, that remain unpublished in manuscripts- or merely the operations of chance- will recover lost relations.” (Joannides)

As was said in the last section, much the same kind of project (inspired by Damisch’s point about the origin of Raphael’s knowledge about the J of Paris story) needs to evaluate the themes of the Malmesbury J of Paris within the milieu of 15^th century humanists in Rome, especially as it seems that one of the figures in the Malmesbury Judgement can be linked with a Raimondi engraving- more of that later. This cultured elite included poets and patrons, some of whom – like Chigi, who is now thought to be a facilitator of knowledge of Venetian painting styles- had direct cultural links with that city and were on good terms with Raphael and members of his workshop. That humanist culture obviously impacted on styles, and one might add this proposed research on poetry and painting is just as important an aspect of the Rome/Venus nexus as studying the stylistic, physiognomic and technical elements of the painting, the subject of the next section. Whether one agrees with the attribution or not, it seems perverse not to accept that research on the Malmesbury J of Paris should evolve along these lines.

Why hasn’t this Raphael attribution merited more attention?

The above question, prompted by a challenge from by H Niyazi of TPP, needs to be addressed. Why hasn’t the publication of the Malmesbury J of Paris attracted more interest? Apart from the fact that this blog isn’t the Burlington Magazine or some other such august journal- but you knew that already didn't you- there are probably a number of reasons.

· There is no context in Raphael studies for an evaluation of this picture. As I’ve been at pains to show in this post, the concept of the Rome/Venice nexus is comparatively recent. If we exclude the romanticist biographically- centred approach of Crowe and Cavalcaselle in the late 19^th century,this research strand starts in the 1980s and begins to gain momentum at the start of the last decade. Every field of art history evolves at a different rate; some ideas take time to bed down. Oberhuber’s death may slow down interest in the Rome/Venice nexus with obvious consequences for this attribution; although the likes of Joannides and Barbieri show that it remains a strand of thought in Raphael studies, though both have different motives in pursuing it. This in itself doesn’t prove the attribution, but it helps to identify a context of stylistic development in which it seems to have appeared.

· At the risk of labouring this point, Raphael scholarship hasn’t paid much attention to the Judgement of Paris as a subject of interest to the humanistic matrix of early cinquecento Rome. Curiously, Damisch’s book on the Judgement of Paris- which devotes a lot of space to Raphael and abounds with relevant insights- hasn’t really been assimilated into analyses. This may have something to do with the bias against art history conducted by French scholars whose methodology- for better or worse- is more theoretical. The recent publication of Christian K. Kleinbub’s study of Raphael which draws heavily on modern French thought is a welcome exception to the rule.

· The Malmesbury J of Paris doesn’t fit the Raphael “edifice” and hence is dismissed. Yet leading Raphael scholars seem, if not to actually want to re-build that structure, at least re-design it to accommodate the Venetian elements. Wether Raphael scholars want to include the Malmesbury painting into this “re-build” is obviously a key question.

· Interest in the J of Paris has focused on Marcantonio Raimondi’s engraving alone, though occasionally it has been linked with other contemporary works as we’ll see. Joannides’s identification of the Venus figure in the Malmesbury painting with an engraving produced in Raphael’s workshop obviously helps to narrow the gap between the interpreter of Raphael’s J of Paris print, and the re-discovered picture. However, Joannides uses this source to argue the painting as a lost Titian creation, not a Raphael design. Obviously the next step is to analyse the links between the Malmesbury J of Paris and the engraving of the same subject, testing the claim that both contain stylistic, formal, as well as physiognomic similarities.

To make this absolutely clear, this will comprise the following: (a) analysis of Marcantonio’s engraving of the J of Paris, and surviving fragments compared with the Malmesbury picture; (b) analysis of morphological and physiognomic elements in the painting; (c) analysis of compositional similarities with Raphael’s works pre and post Malmesbury Judgement; (d) analysis of proposed biographical connections with figures in the painting including “La Fornarina” and Raphael himself. I’ll aim to get this penultimate section up round about Jan 10th, marking and other work permitting.

Notes.

* Sir Denis- who sadly died in April this year-, used this term on a BBC programme made to accompany the Poussin exhibition of 1994 in London. Sir Denis, who was taking Blunt to task for not understanding Poussin’s pictorial language or his artistic personality, cheerfully criticised the former surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures for not being a connoisseur. I have come across the metaphor of architecture in other writings on connoisseurship from time to time; but Sir Denis is the only one who linked it explicitly with fitting pictures into an artist’s oeuvre. Konrad Oberhuber’s catalogue of early Poussin at Fort Worth in 1984 relies on environmental factors, as well as stylistic ones to chart the artist’s early development over time. Some of this crossed over into his Raphael catalogue of 1999.

** The earliest attempt to connect Raphael with the Venetian school, especially Giorgione, seems to have been made by those two great Victorian art explorers, Crowe and Cavalcaselle who saw associations between Venetian painting and Raphael’s landscapes. Apart from the odd throwaway line about Giorgione’s landscapes reminding them of “early Raphael”, they draw attention to a painting of a soldier in the London NG supposedly derived from Giorgione’s Castelfranco Altarpiece; they note how its quality merited an attribution to Raphael, though they maintained it was one of Giorgione’s studies for the altarpiece. AHT has not been able to find out anything more about this attribution; but this work has now been downgraded to a “17^th century imitator of Giorgione” and is thought to have no connection with the Castelfranco painting. As to the attribution to Raphael, AHT merely notes that it may have been inspired by comparisons between the armour on Raphael’s early St George panels in the Louvre and Washington and the high quality reflections on the London soldier. It can be seen here. Obviously in early art history, Raphael’s pre-Roman works stimulated comparisons with the Venetian school, not Rome, as in later scholarship- an interesting shift.

Sources.

Costanza Barbieri, “The Competition between Raphael and Michelangelo and Sebastiano’s Role in It”, in The Cambridge Guide to Raphael (ed) Marcia Hall, (2005).

Patricia Fortini Brown, Venice and Antiquity: The Venetian Sense of the Past, (1996).

Graeme Cameron, The Secrets of Leonardo da Vinci Vol. 1 (2011).

Fabio Chigi, History of the Chigi Family (1618, rev. 1626-30).

Hubert Damisch, Le Jugement de Paris: Iconologie analytique 1, (Paris, 1992); translated as The Judgement of Paris (trans John Goodman), (Chicago, 1996).

Cecil Gould, “Raphael versus Giulio Romano: The Swing Back”, The Burlington Magazine , Vol. 124, No. 953. (Aug., 1982), pp. 479-485+487.

Marcia Hall, Colour and Meaning: Practice and Theory in Renaissance Painting (1994).

Paul Joannides, Titian to 1518: The Assumption of Genius, (2001).

Paul Joannides, “Titian, Giorgione and the Mysteries of Paris”, Artibus et historiae, no. 61 (XXI), 2010, 99-114.

Denis Mahon, The Late Show, Thinker, Painter, Scholar, Spy, BBC, 1994.

Konrad Oberhuber, Poussin: The Origins of French Classicism in Rome, exhibition catalogue, Fort Worth (1984).

Konrad Oberhuber, Raphael: The Paintings, (1999).

Pedretti, Carlo, Raphael : his life and work in the splendours of the Italian Renaissance, with new documents and an unpublished essay by Vincenzo Golzio, (1989).

Various, Raphael: From Urbino to Rome, exhibition catalogue, London, NG, (2004).

Zampetti, Giorgione, 1477-1511, the complete paintings of Giorgione / introduction by Cecil Gould, (1970).

Raphael and the Judgement of Paris.

I promised a follow-up post on the Graeme Cameron review, specifically with reference to the Judgement of Paris considered by that writer to be an autograph work by Raphael. What follows is a summary of the painting distilled from details in GC’s book, but set out in catalogue form. It’s followed by an essay on themes and ideas in the work. Thanks to Graeme Cameron for permission to use the images, and to his brother Norman for supplying information, and fielding my questions.

1. Raphael, The Judgement of Paris, 1512, Private Collection, U.K., 56 x 71 cm.

 

Raphael, The Judgement of Paris, oil on canvas, 56 x 71 cm, Private Collection, U.K.

Provenance.

First recorded in 1648 in the Casa Leoni, near Venice, by Carlo Ridolfi, in his Le Maraviglie dell Arte, as painted by Giorgione; bought by the Hon. James Harris MP, father of 1^st Earl of Malmesbury, in Venice in 1770. Subsequently housed in Malmesbury collection at Heron Court, near Salisbury, except when loaned out to exhibitions- see below. Mentioned by Gustave Waagen (fig 5) as a Giorgione in his Treasures of Art in Great Britain” (1854-7, Vol. 1, p.416) thus, “his Lordship possesses a number of (paintings) several of great value.” The Judgement of Paris”…slender yet powerful figures…warmest golden tones especially striking in this beautiful picture…delicately balanced masses of light in the different planes of distance…and in the background, of…the luminous light of the fine landscape.” A later endorsement of the painting was made by the renaissance scholar, Sir Martin Conway, who said in his monograph on Giorgione; “a very beautiful picture of Paris and the Three Goddesses.” He went on to say that “The Three Goddesses are a beautifully composed group of lovely figures.”

Exhibitions.

Manchester 1857 (“Art Treasures Exhibition”, Manchester, no. 251, “Giorgione”); Leeds, 1868 (“National Exhibition of Works of Art”, no. 214, “Giorgione”); London 1894 (New Gallery, “Exhibition of Venetian Art”, no. 29); London 1912 (R.A., Burlington House, accompanied by full page engraved plate, again as a “Giorgione” fig. 4); London 1929 (Burlington Fine Arts Club, “Early Venetian Exhibition”); Melbourne, 1984 (Special Exhibition.).

Related Works and Close Copies.

2.a-c. clockwise, Uffizi, Dresden and Stockholm copies.

3.Gubbio variant, almost certainly after Stockholm version.

4.1912, engraving, Burlington House exhibition.

Florence, Uffizi Gallery, cited as “Unknown 17thC artist’s copy after a lost Titian”, formerly in “Enrico Albuzio” Collection, Venice. Nearest to the original. (fig 2a)

Lost (destroyed during Allied bombing in WW2), formerly in Dresden Gallery. Revised copy; also recorded as by an Unknown 17thC artist, but content “much simplified” and “reduced.” Many original features missing including rear buildings and Mercury in the sky. (2b)

Stockholm, National Gallery of Sweden, formerly in the Larpent Collection, Oslo. Initially classified as by Unknown artist, but its previous owner, Sophus Larpent, was prepared to go into print to prove it as a Giorgione. (2c)

Gubbio, Gubbio Gallery. Almost identical variant to Stockholm version, attributed to “Dinesi”. Seems to be a later direct copy of the version owned by Larpent. (fig.3)

Engraving to 1912 RA. Exhibition. (fig. 4)

Technical Notes

5. Gustave Waagen

The painting is on canvas, a support that Raphael began to use about 1512- 13, probably in response to Sebastiano’s importation of Venetian methods. The canvas has been relined a long time ago; however, the weave of the original does not appear to exhibit the loose, rough facture evident, for example on the surface of Giorgione’s The Tempest. The canvas may be fine linen judging by the surface evidence. In his Treasures of Art in Great Britain, Gustave Waagen (fig. 5) included a reference to the condition of the painting as being in ...."an excellent state of preservation”, a condition it retains today, having been under glass in its frame. No substantial cleaning has been undertaken [unless many centuries ago] and it appears to retain its original glazes. Many of the photos do indicate craquelure (fig. 1), and it is both normal [and expected] for the period. How it appears in any particular photo depends on lighting angles etc.

6. Page from GC’s book showing hidden modello study and its location.

 

7. Magnified Vega scans of modello from GC’s book.

There are substantial sub-surface pentimenti suggesting that Raphael had used the canvas “like a drawing board” (G.C., 72). The basis of the composition was a rustic figure in a monk-like garment, seated next to a tree. At some point during the evolution of the composition, Raphael characteristically re-thought his design and decided to include his own features rather than an anonymous shepherd. The facial change was followed by new garments, in a renaissance style. Thus Raphael steered the composition away from a rustic pastoral into something more individual and personal. The changes also confirm that originally the painting was not intended as a specific mythology- no apple was originally in the man’s lower right hand- but some evocation of an Arcadian setting, with little narrative content. On the subsurface there is a Madonna and Child modello (figs 6-7), which might be an abandoned project from Raphael’s late 1512 period in Rome; it would be helpful to compare it with underdrawings in other Raphael Madonnas from that time slot. The Judgement of Paris is signed and dated “Rv 1512” on the golden apple that Paris holds; the date “1512” can also be seen on the headband of the central figure, Venus.

Subject and Themes.

8. Detail of Judgement of Paris, Paris.	9.Detail of Judgement of Paris, Minerva, Venus and Juno.

The Judgement of Paris was a favourite subject of many renaissance and early modern painters, as it offered the chance to depict nudes within pleasant surroundings. Although there are variations on the theme, the basic composition of three beautiful women regarded by a male was never changed. Charged with the task of choosing which of the three goddesses, Hera, Aphrodite and Athena (Juno, Venus and Minerva) was the most beautiful, the shepherd Paris chose Aphrodite/Venus, with dire consequences- the Trojan War. Raphael’s Judgment of Paris eschews the grand narrative theme in favour of a more intimate situation. It is a painting conceived to please the eye, with its glistening palette and warm colours. Paris lounges on the grass, dressed in attractive burgundy and white renaissance costume (fig.8); the three goddesses, painted in golden brown and moulded together into a unified form, charm the viewer (fig.9). In tone it is both sensual and courtly; in style, it’s both relaxed and ordered.

It’s no wonder that leading 19^th century connoisseurs like Waagen and Eastlake saw the lyricism of Giorgione in this painting, though by the 1950s, their modern successors were re-considering the attribution; although it was- unsurprisingly- still thought to be a product of the Venetian School. A scholar who has analysed the stylistic links between Roman and Venetian art, Paul Joannides, believed that it was a copy after a lost original of Titian, although he didn’t mention it in his book on early Titian, but did so in a presentation at a Giorgione exhibition held in the U.S.A., and later in an article.[1] To my eye, though the canvas undoubtedly evokes the Venetian Arcadian groves of Giorgione and Titian, there is something Roman about the nudes. In his discussion of it, Graeme Cameron- who’s worked on the painting since 1984- connects it with Sebastiano dell Piombo, a Venetian artist who came to Rome at about this time, to aid Michelangelo.[2] Sebastiano’s artistic relationship with Raphael has mainly been analysed in the context of the competition engineered by the Medici, out of which emerged Raphael’s Transfiguration (Vatican, 1518-20) and Sebastiano’s equally impressive Raising of Lazarus (London, National Gallery, 1518-20).[3] When competition in the earlier Roman period is considered, attention is usually directed towards Raphael’s Galatea and Sebastiano’s Polyphemous- both in the Villa Farnesina (figs 16,17). In the case of the Malmesbury Judgement, it may be more judicious to select another Sebastiano from the same period for comparison.

10. Raphael, The Judgement of Paris, 1512.

11. Sebastiano del Piombo, The Death of Adonis, 1512, Florence, Uffizi, oil on canvas.

It’s an interesting exercise to compare this Judgement of Paris with Sebastiano’s Death of Adonis (Florence, Uffizi), especially as both seem to have been painted in  1512 (figs 10-11). Studying the two paintings, one can discern similarities in mannerisms: the hook like configuration of forefinger and thumb that appears in the Sebastiano is repeated in the hand of the reclining figure of Paris, in the Raphael; there also seems to be echoes of the sharp, chisel like noses in the Raphael nudes. However, there are distinct differences, too. Unlike Sebastiano who’s content to conspicuously display his knowledge of classical sculpture, the Spinario, Crouching Venus et al, possibly as a concession to Roman taste, Raphael has naturalised his female antique sources, a process that can be traced back to the Three Graces (Chantilly, Musée Condé, 1507. As Cameron points out, the Judgement could be seen as a stylistic mid-point between the earlier Chantilly Three Graces and the Graces in a spandrel in the Loggia of Agostino Chigi, ( p. 74,) (figs 12-14).

12.Raphael, The Three Graces, Musée Condé Chantilly, 1507, oil on panel.	13.Detail of Judgement of Paris.	14.Detail from Loggia of Villa, Farnesina, Rome, The Three Graces, fresco, c. 1518.

As one might expect, Raphael’s figures do resemble real women while Sebastiano’s nymphs recall Michelangelo’s unhappy results when representing the female form, in the words of Sydney J. Freedberg, “an almost bulking massiveness, ponderous and sensuously splendid: idealizations, but of sensuous existence.”[4]

15.Hera? (La Fornarina) from Judgement and details of La Donna Velata, Florence, Pitti Palace, c. 1514, and Sistine Madonna, Vatican, c. 1512-14.

If Raphael borrowed, to use Freedberg’s word, a Giorgionismo style from Sebastiano, then what was the purpose? Assuming, as Graeme Cameron states, Raphael created the Judgment of Paris for private reasons, as “a pictorial message of love, set in a context of a mythical classical beauty contest” (p.64); if the painting has some connection with Raphael's own love affairs, which the presence of a woman resembling his lover “La Fornarina” definitely suggests (fig15), then Raphael might have seen in Sebastiano’s Death of Adonis, or similar works, a blend of Roman grandeur and Venetian sensuality appropriate for his aesthetic of love.  According to Joannides, Sebastiano may have painted the Death of Adonis immediately after his arrival in Rome; it may have hung in the Chigi Villa of the Farnesina since Peruzzi cited aspects of it in his Sala delle Prospettive of 1516, an illusionistic set of paintings based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, on the piano nobile of the Villa Farnesina..[5] If that were the case then Raphael would surely have seen the Death of Adonis and filtered its Giorgionismo through his antique, Roman style that he was using. Raphael started working for Chigi in 1510, and he was working on the Galatea in 1512, a possible pendant to Sebastiano’s Polyphemous (figs 16-17), who resembles the satyr at the rear of the nymphs in the Death of Adonis..For those who remain wary of admitting the Malmesbury Judgement of Paris to the Raphael canon, they will have to detect another Venetian painter practicing in Rome in 1512. Apart from an influx of Tuscan, Sienese and Umbrian painters, Venice is not really represented in the Eternal City until Sebastiano arrives, and his Giorgionismo is then assimilated into the Roman antique style in that crucial time slot of 1511-12.However, it seems highly unlikely that Sebastiano, or even Titian painted the Malmesbury Judgement of Paris. It should also be pointed out that the Judgement of Paris wasn’t really a Venetian subject.

16. Loggia di Galatea, Villa Farnesina, Rome, 1510-12.	17. Sebastiano del Piombo, Polyphemous and Raphael, Galatea, 1511-12, Villa Farnesina, Rome, Rome, fresco.

18 Marcantonio Raimondi, The Judgement of Paris (after Raphael), 1514-18. Detail: “piu grassa Minerva.”

In the “censored” version, known for centuries through the famous Marcantonio Raimondi engraving (fig.18), the aesthetic of love was played down, and the mythological overtones increased. Although little connection has been made by past scholarship between the Raimondi engraving and the Malmesbury Judgement of Paris, there are obvious compositional similarities, as pointed out by Graeme Cameron, (64-5). He notes the close juxtaposition of the heads of Venus and Juno, which repeats the configuration of the heads in the painting. The pose of the reclining river god in Raimondi’s engraving also closely matches Paris in the Malmesbury Judgement There is still the problem of Athena/Minerva, who was separated from the group and turned away from the spectator, unlike in the painting. In the engraving, Minerva has the proportions of Sebastiano’s oversize nudes; but according to Hubert Damisch, by placing Minerva on the “compositional central axis”, Raphael referenced Alberti’s distinction between painting and mathematics, “whereas geometry has need only of points without extension, of lines without thickness, of surfaces without texture, art requires a “fatter Minerva”, piu grassa Minerva.[6] Lines here refer to drawing, and the “fatter Minerva” to the needs of painting rather than graphic delineation. As Damisch observed, Raphael “cast his demonstration in black and white, without recourse to colour”.[7] This is simply a hypothesis, but I wonder if Raphael chose black and white in the engraving because he wanted to convey an altered idea of beauty, different to the vivid, warm colours of the painted Judgement of Paris?

19 Malmesbury Judgment of Paris.

20 Raimondi, Judgment of Paris.

21 Details of Judgement and Sistine Madonna

Damisch’s long study of the theme of the Judgment of the Paris concerns itself just as much with beauty as iconography; and we should consider beauty when we view the Malmesbury Judgement of Paris, especially when seen alongside Raimondi’s engraving, (figs 19-20). We should also take seriously Graeme Cameron’s claim that the Judgment of Paris is a personal statement of Raphael. Why else would the painter compare himself to Paris, and the goddesses to the women in his life? For those who doubt the attribution to Raphael, they will need to explain why Paris resembles Raphael’s self-portraits (fig.22); why the woman on the left of the goddess group resembles portraits of La Fornarina, and women like the Virgin in the Sistine Madonna, or La Donna Velata (figs. 15,21), who are thought to be modelled on Raphael’s lover. However, another problem emerges here. If the woman on the left is Athena/Minerva- the robes covering her suggest modesty- then why did Raphael neglect to give Aphrodite/Venus the features of his inamorata? As Damisch argued, though both Athena and Hera incarnated different notions of beauty, it was Aphrodite who was associated with a canonical idea of beauty, derived from the Greeks, (Damisch, 132). Out of the three goddesses in the painting, it is Aphrodite/Venus who seems to based conspicuously on an antique source. Despite Aphrodite according with classical canons of antique beauty, Graeme Cameron might be right to say the La Fornarina figure is likely to be Hera, as she was said to have the greatest beauty, (66). His identification may be confirmed by the fact that in one of the later related copies, attributes have been included to identify each goddess. In the Larpent version and its associated variant (figs 2c and 3) Athena’s arms appear on the grass behind the right hand woman; a cupid accompanies the central female, thus proving that she is Aphrodite/Venus, which means the remaining goddess must be Hera. Yet, there is a further complication since deep scans have detected Raphael’s monogramme “Rv” on the genitals of the middle woman. Such explorations into the technical and sexual boggle the mind, but they do underline the confusion over who is the most attractive woman, if Hera is modelled on “La Fornarina”, and Aphrodite is “branded” as an inamorata of the painter. We could account for this confusion over pulchritude by turning to Raphael’s own words on beauty and women. As he said in a famous letter to his friend Baldassare Castiglione, possibly depicted with Raphael in a later self-portrait (fig. 23).

“..in order to paint a beautiful woman, I would have to see several beautiful women …but because there are so few … I make use of a certain idea which comes into my mind. Whether it carries any excellence of art I do not know, but I work hard to achieve it.’[8]

22 illustrations from GC’s book: Paris figure (with varnish removed) compared with Raphael Self-Portrait. from School of Athens, 1510-12.	23 Raphael, Self-Portrait with a Friend, possibly Castiglione, Paris, Louvre, c. 1518, oil on canvas, 99 x 83 cm.

Was that “idea” to be associated with Aphrodite, Athena, Hera, or all of the goddesses? It’s difficult to say, but Raphael’s treatment of the goddesses in the Malmesbury Judgement of Paris suggests that he had a more complex notion of how feminine beauty could be calibrated. More work needs to be done on the relationship between the re-discovered Judgment of Paris and the engraving in relation to beauty. Damisch is the obvious reference point here. Questions remain of course. It needs to be determined where this painting was before the 17th century; was it in Raphael’s private collection, or maybe Chigi’s who was aware of the cross-over between Raphael’s love life and his painting. We also need to discover exactly what Raphael learnt about the Venetian school via Sebastiano’s paintings; this applies especially to his use of materials and supports. Though it may not be possible, it would help to compare the under drawing and pentimenti in the Judgment with other examples in Raphael’s oeuvre.

However, it seems fair to say for the present that the Malmesbury Judgement of Paris might be a visual counterpart to Raphael’s written meditations on seeking the ideal in women, especially given its personal associations. Raphael cast his aesthetic of love in terms of a subject which was perfectly appropriate, because it brought themes of selection, beauty and love together in close interaction, the Judgement of Paris.

Sources

Albert, Della Pittura.

Constant Barbieri, “Raphael, Michelangelo and Sebastiano” in The Cambridge Guide to Raphael, ed. Marcia Hall, (Cambridge, 2005), 141-164.

Graeme Cameron, The Secrets of Leonardo da Vinci, Vol 1, Vega Scan, 2011.

Hubert Damisch, Le Jugement de Paris: Iconologie analytique 1, (Paris, 1992); translated as The Judgement of Paris (trans John Goodman), (Chicago, 1996).

Sydney J. Freedberg, Painting in Italy 1500-1600, (New Haven and London, 1993).

Rona Goffen, Renaissance Rivals: Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, Titian (New Haven and London, 2002).

Paul Joannides, Titian to 1518: The Assumption of Genius (New Haven and London, 2002).

Edward Williamson, “The Concept of Grace in the Work of Raphael and Castiglione”, Italica, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Dec., 1947), pp. 316-324.

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[1] Joannides was one of several academics who gave public seminar lectures at the National Gallery, Washington exhibition, “Rediscovering Venetian Renaissance Painting", on 17/9/2006. His was entitled "Titian, Giorgione and the Mysteries of Paris.” In later correspondence, he advised that he had publicly stated [presumably in this lecture], that the Malmesbury Judgement of Paris subject was by Titian. He later published an article in Artibus 2010 with the same title, and he published the 1912 engraving in this article. The article is available here [in abstract]. http://artibusethistoriae.org/chapter649.html. Thanks to Norman Cameron for the information in this footnote. I haven’t read the Joannides article yet, as my institution’s run ends before the date of publication, so if anybody’s got a copy….

[2] Graeme Cameron, The Secrets of Leonardo da Vinci, Vol 1, Vega Scan, 2011, 58-75, 62.

[3] Constant Barbieri, “Raphael, Michelangelo and Sebastiano” in The Cambridge Guide to Raphael, ed. Marcia Hall, (Cambridge, 2005), 141-164; Rona Goffen, Renaissance Rivals: Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, Titian (New Haven and London, 2002).

[4] Sydney J. Freedberg, Painting in Italy 1500-1600, (New Haven and London, 1993), 111. Friedberg’s short analysis remains the best on this fascinating painting.

[5] Paul Joannides, Titian to 1518: The Assumption of Genius (New Haven and London, 2002), 136.

[6] Hubert Damisch, Le Jugement de Paris: Iconologie analytique 1, (Paris, 1992); translated as The Judgement of Paris (trans John Goodman), (Chicago, 1996), 235. For Alberti’s quote, see Della Pittura, “Noi, perché vogliamo le cose essere poste da vedere, per questo useremo quanto dicono più grassa Minerva”.

[7] Damisch, The Judgement of Paris, 235.

[8] See the discussion in Edward Williamson, “The Concept of Grace in the Work of Raphael and Castiglione”, Italica, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Dec., 1947), pp. 316-324, who notes that “the work of Raphael is equally a commentary on this text.”, 323.