BORDONE, Paris

The painter studied in Venice at Titian and later he became a rival of his master. In order to avoid this rivalry he left Venice and worked in several cities of northern Italy. This allegory was probably painted for the decoration of a room and it is assumed that the figure of the man is a portrait of the commissioner.

This painting is predominated by the representation of architecture: the Annunciation is set in front of a powerfully foreshortened loggia, reminiscent of works by Jacopo Sansovino. The Alpine landscape beyond the arches of the loggia conjures up parts of Veneto where the famous villas of Venetian patricians were being built around that time.

King David (shown as a very small figure in the background, looking out of one of the windows of his palace) fell in love with the beautiful Bathsheba when he saw her bathing and had her brought to him for a lovers’ tryst. Soon afterward he sent her husband Uriah (the horseman close to the vanishing point of the picture) to his death, treacherously ordering him to be set in the forefront of the battle, and then married Bathsheba himself. God punished the couple with the death of their first son.

Paris Bordone used the scenery appropriate to tragedy from Serlio’s architectural treatise. He began by drawing the architecture on a full-size cartoon, which he then transferred to his canvas by tracing it through holes.

In this large altarpiece the Virgin is accompanied by the plague saints: Roche, Sebastian, and Catherine of Alexandria, who are shown with the obscure early Christian papal martyr Fabianus. The influence of Titian, Bordone’s teacher, as well as other earlier Venetian sources - Giorgione and the late monumental altars of Giovanni Bellini - is evident.

Nikolaus K�rbler came from a prosperous merchant family, known to have been in Judenburg since the late fifteenth century. he traded in medicinal and fragrant plants, and also vitriol, for which Venice was a major transshipment centre. Charles V rewarded him for his services to the imperial army by raising him to the nobility in 1532, probably the occasion for commissioning from Bordone.

The sitter’s pose and contemplative manner place him in the line of Titian’s portraits from the 1520s.

Formerly the sitter was identified as Hieronymus Krafft whose name is on the letter held by the sitter. However, the crest on the pilaster indicates that the sitter belongs to the Stachel family from Augsburg.

The sitter of this portrait earned the painting the title Cavaliere Attacabrighe (Sir Quarrelsome) on account of his self-confident, almost provocative pose and the way he challenges the viewer with his gaze.

Originally this portrait of an unidentified man was larger, however, it has since been reduced in size from 57 x 42 cm.

The rich red silk is alive in every crease, while the smooth bodice undoubtedly restrained only by a hinged iron cage, invented about this time. Bordone created a cool study in colour values - gown and hair, lace, linen, pearls, and flesh.

Half-length figures of young women - reputed to be courtesans, with an iconography initially adopted by Titian, Palma Vecchio and then Bordone - were very much in vogue in Venetian art of the sixteenth century. Often, as in this case, Bordone would add an architectural background to define an interior setting.

The painting is a reinterpretation of the rest on the Flight into Egypt as a simple idyll, set on a great clearing in the depth of the forest.

In the nineteenth century the painting was attributed to Giorgione.

After a phase of admiring study of Titian and Giorgione, Paris Bordone directed his attention first towards the impetuous art of Pordenone and then towards the intimistic narrative strength of the Brescians, to reach during the 1530s a brief period of equilibrium between sumptuousness of colour, inherited from Titian, and the adventurous freedom of composition learnt from the Mannerists. The universally recognized masterpiece of this period is the canvas Bordone painted in 1534 for the Hall of the Albergo in the Scuola Grande di San Marco.

The subject of the picture is the second part of a legend which was very dear to Venetians. An old fisherman hands the Doge the ring given him by St. Mark as a proof of the help he gave the saint and two other patron saints of Venice, George and Nicholas, by taking them in his boat to the mouth of the lagoon at the Lido in order that they might make the sign of the cross to sink a boatful of demons that were on their way to threaten Venice with a terrible tempest. The naturalness of the scene, so rich in costumes, portraits and Lombardesque architecture, loses something of its intensity because of the theatrical nature of the architectural setting and because of the rhetorical quality of all the physical and spiritual reactions to the extraordinary event. Thus arises a sort of subtle uneasiness which spreads from the centre stage into the architectural wings of the scene and creates the impression of the rarified atmosphere of an event unrelated to time.

One of Bordone’s most celebrated works, this painting represents a favourite subject of early sixteenth-century Venetian art. Its Giorgionesque reminiscences, here reduced to a sort of bourgeois languor, date it around 1525-30. Yet it also shows a Mannerist restlessness that relates it to contemporary work by Palma il Vecchio. The scene is one of venal love (note the pallor of the man embracing the woman). Although the mysterious third figure with the swaggering air may portray a procurer, his artist’s beret suggests that it may be a self-portrait. In that case the meaning of the work would be allegorical rather than specific.

Many of Paris Bordone’s early works consist of paintings half-length anonymous beautiful women, in the tradition of Giorgione and Palma Vecchio, as well as of Titian; but by the 1540s he had expanded his repertoire to include full-length mythological subjects, usually comprising prominent female nudes. The reclining nude figure of Venus had been a favourite subject in Venetian painting since the early years of the sixteenth century. Bordone’s painting belongs to this tradition.

The painting is signed at bottom left on tree trunk: .O. PARIDIS. /bordono

The beautiful courtesan, with a bright scarlet dress that falls in cascades, appears in two guises. One is Venus, with an apple (or an orange, which the infant Jesus also holds sometimes instead of an apple, and which represents desire, so that it has the same metaphorical value), symbol of love and beauty, given to her by Bacchus. The fruit has a multitude of erotic associations and also alludes to the artist’s own name (Paris). But she also takes on the allegorical significance of Victory, who usually holds a pomegranate in her right hand and a helm in her left. By this she is, in turn, referring to Mars, disarmed by Cupid, winged boy and the son of Venus, seated on the armor. Mars, according to Aristotle, is rightly linked with Venus, for men of war are strongly inclined to lust.

The victorious Venus rests on the stump of a tree. Behind stands a stag, symbol of nobility and courtesy and emblem of the royal house of France. As well as suggesting who may have commissioned the painting, this hints at a connection between Mars and Actaeon, whose attribute is the stag. Its antlers, resembling the branches of a tree, are periodically renewed, symbolizing the continual rebirth of life. Having got this far, we can attempt a more detailed interpretation of the subject, in which, behind the common mythological theme of Mars, Venus, and Cupid, is concealed an ‘Allegory of the victory of love (and of beauty) that always overcomes martial vigour,’ a subject that could have been dedicated to two people in love or, on the contrary, reflect the world of courtesans, as might seem more likely from the naked breasts, the colour of the dress, and the blond tresses of the woman.

It is no surprise that between 1649 and 1652, when the painting is mentioned for the first time in the collection, its subject remained an enigma and was not stated. It is clear that this sensuous mythological fable of extraordinary chromatic richness, full of stylistic preciosities as well as decorative qualities in the sumptuousness and beauty of the fabrics, has connections with the world of chivalry, the refinements of aristocratic courtesy, the works of erotic art, and the exquisite and elegant style of the Mannerists, that are all typical of Fontainebleau. We know that the artist visited the French court, perhaps twice, in ¹⁵³⁸⁄₃₉ during the reign of Francis I and in ¹⁵⁵⁹⁄₆₀, in the time of Francis II. Recently critics have dated this painting to both the first and the second of these visits. The second is more likely given the highly evolved style of the work.

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This painting shows the model in front of a niche, facing the viewer. Her eyes gaze into the distance, her abundant, long reddish-blond hair falling over her shoulders. The painting fits into the tradition of Venetian ideal female portraits, with started with Bellini’s Naked Young Woman in Front of the Mirror and was developed by Titian and Palma Vecchio.