Portrait of Filippo Archinto
March to June 1558
114.8 × 88.7 cm
Oil on canvas
Inv.-No. Cat. 204 in the Philadelphia Museum of Art , Philadelphia
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The portrait of Filippo Archinto was probably created between March and June 1558 under the mastery of the Venetian Titian and shows Filippo Archinto (July 5, 1495 to June 21, 1558), who held the office of Archbishop of Saluzzo from 1546 to 1554 . The left half of the sitter's face is covered by a thin curtain and thus veils the split personality of the sitter. The work with the dimensions 114.8 × 88.7 cm is painted with oil on canvas and is now with the inventory number Cat. 204 as part of the John G. Johnson Collection imPhiladelphia Museum of Art .
The dignitary who was appointed archbishop by Pope Paul IV on December 16, 1556 on the recommendation of King Philip II , but who was not accredited by the government of Milan, seems to remain in the picture in resignation.
description
In front of a dark background, the viewer sees Filippo Archinto, his left half of his body covered by a delicate, semi-translucent curtain, sitting on a red-velvet armchair. He wears a purple chasuble above a sticharion , which reveals his right arm resting on a carved armrest. On his right ring finger he wears a stone-set bishop's ring , in his left he holds the Book of the Annunciation , in which the middle finger serves as a bookmark.
A delicate, semi-transparent cloth hangs in front of his body, the hem of which runs right through his right eye and downwards seems to touch his right knee, which opens the cloth a little further and thus also shows his ring finger, which would otherwise be hidden behind the material. The facial features are only vaguely recognizable due to the clear folds. The facial expression is relaxed, the sitter may be waiting.
Authorship and provenance
The authorship of this image and that of the version without the semi-concealing veil, which is now part of the Altman Gallery of the Met , is still in dispute. The similarities between the two works are so striking that for a long time one of them was thought to be a copy of the other. Both paintings were in the possession of the Archinto family in Milan until 1863 and were transferred to the Italico Brass collection in Paris . In the exhibition catalog of that time, the picture with the veil was correctly named as by Titian, the one without the veil wrongly referred to as by Leandro Bassano . The right ear was damaged and will have been restored by that time. With the sale of the Altman picture to the Met in 1913, the two pictures moved into the focus of scholars. The following table shows the different views of the scholars:
| Professional | Time, publication in | Johnson Collection | Altman Collection |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oskar Fischel | 1907 | "Weak copy" by other hand | Titian (1554–1556) |
| Bernard Berenson | 1913 | Titian (1554–1556) | |
| Wilhelm Suida | 1933, The Burlington Magazine | "Dating unclear" | |
| Hans Tietze | 1950 | does not list either of the two works in his Tizian catalog raisonné | |
| Rodolfo Pallucchini (1908–1989) | 1969 | Titian, 1559 | Copy, 1559 |
| Francesco Valcanover (1926-2016) | "Only attributed" | ||
In 1909 the painting went to the American lawyer and art collector John G. Johnson . His legacy went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
interpretation
The work stands largely at the beginning of a multitude of motifs which, as a theory of the pictorial act, illustrate the “interplay between showing and hiding, veiling and revealing”. Political calculation, if not propaganda, is also involved in this way of portraying it. “Do not reveal if freedom is dear to you, because my face is the dungeon of love.” This quotation from Leonardo da Vinci is aimed at the potential viewer of an image that corresponds to the practice developed in the Christian cult of images of “covering particularly salvific works of art in order to only reveal them on high holidays. "
The three essential pictorial features, arranged in a right-angled triangle , right eye, bishop's ring and the little book are symptomatically transfigured by the partial covering : the ring can be seen freely, the eye is half covered and the book is completely covered. Horst Bredekamp sees this as an indication that he is already wearing the ring, i.e. that he holds the office, but is hindered in the exercise of the office, so this picture document is a testimony to failure.
But there is also another interpretation: The right human eye has long been considered the eye of justice , from which nothing remains hidden. Here Leonardo's saying about the unveiling of a picture would have a threatening connotation , in that in this case the viewer would be “grasped by full visual inspection and thus taken captive of the picture”. Franz-Joachim Verspohl interprets this iconographically as the image of Moses , who had to cover his eyes with a veil because of the divine glow. The viewer would be "taken in full view and captured by the image". This would also explain why Titian had previously painted the portrait of Filippo Archintus without the veil.
An even deeper explanation of this theory could be provided by the aspect of the "two-sided teaching" of the body, which comes from the polymath Gerolamo Cardano . Archinto knew his teachings and probably also his main work De vita propria and promoted him during his lifetime. According to these writings, the left side is that of spiritual ascent, the right side is to be equated with damnation . If Titian alluded to it with this portrait, it would be a painted reflection of Leonardo's warning. But regardless of whether the people named here were so clear about these connections, they should all arise from similar considerations.
literature
- Horst Bredekamp : Theory of the image act , Suhrkamp 2010, ISBN 978-3-518-58516-0 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Beat Wismer : Behind the curtain. Of the knowledge of the veil, or: of the secret of concealment and revelation . In: Behind the curtain. Exhibition catalog 2015/16, Kunstpalast Düsseldorf , pages 175–176, ISBN 978-3777426464
- ↑ Vescovi della diocesi di Saluzzo . Web archive from September 30, 2007
- ↑ Josephus Antonius Saxius: Philippus II. Archivtus , in: Archiepiscoporum mediolanensium series historico-chronologica ad criticae leges, et veterum monumentorum fidem illustrata: Opus posthumum , 1755 Volume 3, page 1009 (Latin)
- ↑ a b c d e Bredekamp: Theory of the image act, pages 23–29
- ^ A guide to the works of the major Italian Renaissance Painters: Titian. Cavallini to Veronese. Italian Renaissance Art
- ^ Richard J. Betts: Titian's Portrait of Filippo Archinto in the Johnson Collection , Volume 49, Volume 1, pp. 59-61
- ↑ Classics of Art: Titian. Volume 3, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt Stuttgart, 1907
- ↑ Rodolfo Pallucchini (1908-1989) . Fondi Fotografici, 2012
- ↑ Beat Wismer : Behind the curtain. Of the knowledge of the veil, or: of the secret of concealment and revelation . In: Behind the curtain. Exhibition catalog 2015/16, Kunstpalast Düsseldorf , page 18, ISBN 978-3777426464
- ↑ "Non iscoprire se llibertà / t'e cara ché ′ l volto mio / è charciere d'amore". However, the interpretation of this quote is controversial (see Bredekamp p. 27, footnote 10) on Giambattista Marino's interpretation of this quote.