Anyone who’s ever wandered round shows of Old Master paintings will be used to seeing the phrase ‘attributed to’ before various names. Is this the genuine article, you wonder? Or the work of some fraudster? Not that it was ever that clear-cut: Renaissance painters rarely worked on anything singlehandedly, and often assistants would bash out lesser works. But as this exhibition – which is full of ‘attributed tos’ – reveals, specific authorship isn’t always important. It’s not a case of who-did-what, so much as who-was-where-when.
Such was the case with Venice at the turn of the sixteenth century: a wealthy city-state that had a remarkable artistic landscape. It was the stomping ground of mysterious artist Giorgione (born Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco around 1477). He’s lined up here alongside forebears, followers and followers-turned-successors – but it’s Giorgione who is framed as the real nucleus of this fertile creative scene.
In the first two rooms, we’re introduced to the ‘psychological revolution’ that shook up Venetian portraiture after a certain Leonardo of Vinci visited in 1499. Pictures that once just boasted of rank and status could now also say something about personality and state of mind. This was typically expressed symbolically via an object in the subject’s hand: books, lutes, swords. In (maybe) Titian’s ‘Portrait of a Young Man’, a stroppy-looking bloke holds a handkerchief – although X-rays have shown that in previous layers it was a scroll and then a dagger. Maybe he cheered up during his sittings.
After the portraits come mythological scenes and religious works. Sebastiano del Piombo, one of Giorgione’s pupils-cum-fanboys, shines with his two works, the ‘Birth’ and ‘Death of Adonis’. (In the latter, the boar that killed Adonis is played by a rather pretty Sienese pig that Piombo must have seen and – who knows – brought into the studio.) Giorgione’s influence worked both ways: the figures in Bellini’s scintillating altarpiece ‘Virgin and Child’ (1505) show his influence, too – even though Bellini was half a century older than the youngster.
And in the final room, we have Giorgione’s real curveball, ‘La Vecchia’ (1508-10): a wrinkled old maid who serves as an allegory for mortality. It’s a quiet, humble leap forward in Western art. There’s no preening nobleman, no Greek deity, no Virgin Mary: just the artist’s imagination. Not that old age was something that afflicted Giorgione himself: in 1510, aged 32, he was finished off by the plague. He’ll never have the glory of, say, Titian, who both outlived and ultimately outshone his master. But this measured, small-scale show puts him where he should be: centre stage.