Giorgione or Titian?

Giorgione / Tiziano: Pastoral Concert - 1510 

      

Giorgione or Titian? 

It is a matter of debate even in our day who the author of one of the most splendid Renaissance masterpieces was: Giorgione, who died young at the peak of his career or his student Titian, the young genius still under the influence of his tutor? There was only 10 years of age difference between the two artists. The master, who was 32 years old when this picture was painted, and his aspiring student even co-operated in several paintings. Titian completely absorbed that sensitive, luminous palette, the forming of the figures by using vapoury, hazy lights, for which Zorzon (Giorgio in a dialect) from Castelfranco was named 'the Great' after his death - that is Giorgione.

This painter was not only significant in his talent but in his stature as well, after-ages remember him as a handsome adonis, a favourite with ladies. Vasari writes that he could play the lute and sing excellently, embodying the Renaissance court man with his gallant style. He was an artist for the elite, the secret and delicate messages of his paintings could only be understood by the insiders of high culture even in his own time. His student Titian was a well-mannered, pleasant company as well, a star of royal courts all through his career until he grew as old as Methuselah (he died at the age of 91!). Yet I have always sensed that more robust, earthly character in his pictures which is missing form the ethereal world of Giorgione.  
In this picture we can hardly find an intelligible symbol about the identities of the figures. We can only rely on our knowledge from mythology: one of the common theories says that the two female figures are invisible Muses, that is why the two men don't look at them. The lady with the jug would be Polyhymnia, the muse of religious chants, whereas the lady with the flute would be Calliope, the inspirer of entertaining poetry. (Music has been strongly connected to poetry from antiquity to the Middle Ages, because the long poems that spread from mouth to mouth could only be remembered with the help of a melody). According to another explanation, the painting shows the two faces of Venus, the sacred and profane love. Let us mention that Venetian masters, unlike their southern colleagues, used live models and not sculptures to depict female nudes. And as their commissioners were also flesh and blood people, for sure they would love to watch yet another depiction of the goddess of love, sometimes as a portrait of their own lovers (see the Birth of Venus by Botticelli).

Tiziano: Sacred and Profane Love, 1514

What a great deal more obvious is the rendition of the same topic a few years later by Titian, the Sacred and Profane Love! The brushwork, the beauty of the faces, the delicacy of the characters is unchanged but the positions of the ladies are far more theatrical, while the colours and the attributes in their hands immediately tell even us today which one is which.  As for my point of view, I agree with the Hungarian painter Aurél Bernáth, who believes  that the Concert - and Giorgione - is more sophisticated than Titian, it  does not look for attraction so much and is penetrated by silent sensitivity. I was really lucky to see this picture in Vienna at the Bellini-Giorgione-Titian exhibition, where the Louvre had lent it for the first time in 50 years. It made the same impression on me.  

It is hard to tell whose child it is. X-ray examinations support that it was painted by one and only one hand, that of Titian. However, I am stubborn in my belief that this painting is the last work of Giorgione, perhaps the most mature one, which he painted before his death. I may imagine that he had died before he was ready with it and his artistic heir, Titian completed the masterpiece - for his memory.