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An Early Interpretation of Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Extract
The National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin has a painting of The Liberation of Jerusalem in its collection (fig. l). One enters the carefully arranged and brilliantly colored composition through the most prominent figure on a rearing horse who signals the onslaught enacted to the right. In sharp contrast is the relaxed and somewhat melancholy allegory of victory reclining in the foreground. By combining a keen historical accuracy with an allegorical figure to suggest the context and purpose of action, the painter reveals himself to be acutely sensitive to Torquato Tasso's epic poem Gerusalemme liberata. Before pursuing this relationship, however, there is a question of authorship to resolve.
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- Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1978
References
1 See White, James, National Gallery of Ireland (New York, 1968), plate 46Google Scholar. I am indebted to the Gallery and especially to Andrew O'Connor for his help. I wish also to thank Prof. Rensselaer Lee for his kind attention and most helpful suggestions. The Julian Park Fund, SUNY at Buffalo, is partially responsible for financing the publication of the photographs.
2 All of these works have been published in the exhibition catalogue of 1959 by Bucci, Mario, Forlani, Anna, Berti, Luciano, and Gregori, Mina, Mostra del Cigoli e del suo ambiente (San Miniato, 1959)Google Scholar. Most recently The Resurrection was published by Miles Chappell: ‘Cigoli's Resurrection for the Pitti Palace,’ The Burlington Magazine, 116 (August 1974), 469-474. For a study of the development of this painting, see also Edmund Pillsbury and Caldwell, John, Sixteenth Century Italian Drawings, Form and Function (New Haven, 1974), no. 42Google Scholar.
3 It is printed in Gaulterotti, Raffaello, Descrizione del regale apparato fatto nella nobile città di Firenze per la venuta, e per le nozze della serenissima Madama Cristina di Loreno Moglie del Serenissimo Don Ferdinando Medici terzo Gran Duca di toscana, Libro secondo (Florence, 1589)Google Scholar, plate p. 92. I am indebted to the Spencer Collection of the New York Public Library for permission to study the book. A drawing for this painting by Sand di Tito is published in Feste e apparati Medici da Cosimo I a Cosimo II, Mostra di Disegni et incizioni (Florence, 1969), pp. 67-76, plate II.
4 As yet there is no clue to the commission of the painting. It is known that Tasso was in Florence in 1590 at the request of the Grand Duke Ferdinand, a situation that might have stimulated Cigoli's painting. According to Baldinucci (Notizie de’ Professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua [1818], II, 62-64) Tasso met Buontalenti, Cigoli's architectural instructor. Angolo Solerti, Vita di Tasso (Turin, 1895), 1, 656-658, exposes this meeting as a myth. No doubt Cigoli was drawn to Tasso, however, given the author's fame and the controversy surrounding him (see Brand, C. P., Torquato Tasso [Cambridge, 1965], pp. 119f.)Google Scholar.
5 Gualterotti, Descrizione, II, 28.
6 See Bertela, Feste, pp. 67-76.
7 The foreground right of Cigoli's Defeat is based on Leonardo's Battle of Anghiari. Specifically Cigoli's two soldiers on horseback relate to Leonardo's main figures known to us from the Rubens drawing in the Louvre. To my knowledge this is the first direct evidence of Leonardo's influence on Cigoli. Indirect evidence of Leonardo appears in his Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine (ca. 1605) in the collection of Richard Schlatter in Neshanic Station, N.J., though this was probably revived by way of the Carracci in Rome ( Carman, C. H., ‘A New Painting by Cigoli: The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine,’ Paragone, no. 291 [1974], 73–79 Google Scholar).
8 The English translation I have consulted is that of Edward Fairfax, 1600, introd. Roberto Weiss (Carbondale, 111., 1962).
9 In the first full edition published in 1581 in Ferrara, Tasso included an ‘Allegoria del Poema’ wherein he explains the nature of the characters and their relationship, principally Godfrey and Rinaldo.
10 See Krautheimer's, R. Ghiberti (Princeton, 1970), II, plate 122aGoogle Scholar; and Rowley, G., Ambrogio Lorenzeti (Princeton, 1958)Google Scholar, fig. 73. For reference to a number of other examples see Marie, Raimond Van, The Development of the Italian School of Painting (The Hague, 1937), VI, 6 Google Scholar.
11 See Kirschbaum, E. et al., Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie (Rome, 1968), 1, 48 Google Scholar, for a general association of Eve as Earth Mother.
12 Ibid.
13 A clue to the meaning of the figure in this context is found in Paul's letter to Galatians 4:22-26 (Douay version):
For it is written that Abraham had two sons: The one by a
bond-woman and the other by a free woman
But he who was of the bond-woman was born according to the flesh;
but he of the free woman, was by promise
Which things are said by an allegory. For these are the two testaments.
The one from mount Sina, engendering unto bondage; which is Agar:
For Sina is a mountain in Arabia, which hath affinity to that
Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children.
But that Jerusalem, which is above is free: which is our mother.
The point of his allegory is to create historical roots for the current situation of those enslaved (Galatians in this case) and those who are free (Christians). Isaac, the son of Abraham and Sarah, extends his lineage to those who transcend law (Judaism) in Christianity, and Ishmael, the son of Abraham and Hagar, Sarah's slave woman, is the ancestor of those still enslaved. Paul is addressing the Galatians to persuade them to give up their adherence to Jewish law because it will not grant them salvation. Law, religious authority exclusive of promise, by which he means faith, is insufficient. He wants to establish for them the importance of faith and the necessity of free will and therefore by implication the necessity also of works. Such is the context for Paul's allegory on Jerusalem. The image that he evokes of Jerusalem enslaved and Jerusalem above that is free is readily adaptable to the painting. The woman in the painting is an allegory of Christian Victory as an image of Jerusalem enslaved yet waiting to be freed just as the Jerusalem above her is being freed. On the strength of this similarity it seems likely that Cigoli was moved by Paul's image and perhaps Paul's concern with faith and the notion of free will.
14 A painting of Paradise by Hendrick de Clerck and Denis van Alsloot contains four reclining figures similar in posture to Cigoli's allegorical figure. They represent water, earth, fire, and air and the first two, like Cigoli's figure, hold a conch shell and a cornucopia respectively. See Deutsche uni niederlandische Malerei zwischen Renaissance und Barock (Munich, 1963), p. 27, illustration p. 88. For a fascinating discussion of the symbolism of shells, including the conch shell, and their relationship to water, regeneration, and procreation see Barb, A. A., ‘Diva Matrix,’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 15-16 (1952-53), 193–238 Google Scholar.
15 That the image of liberation may be related to Paul (see note 12) and hence to his stress on faith further suggests the possible doctrinaire meaning of the painting. The Council of Trent sought to strike a balance between faith and works, not wishing, as Luther had done, to overemphasize faith. Because of Paul's emphasis on faith he was liked by Luther. Possibly the allegory in the painting is meant to take advantage of Paul in light of his popularity among Protestants. If so, by emphasizing Paul through a balance between faith and works, the allegory undercuts Luther, restoring Paul to a position consistent with Catholic doctrine. In the painting as in Paul, faith and acts are interdependent.
16 Illustration for canto 18 taken from an edition of 1617 (La Gerusalemme liberata di Torquato Tasso con le annotationi di Scipion Gentili ed. Giulio Gustavini [Genoa, 1617]) that is based on Castello's first engraved illustrations in the 1590 edition of the poem.
17 Waterhouse, E. K., ‘Tasso and the Visual Arts,’ Italian Studies, 3 (1947-48), 158 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
18 Lee, Rensselaer W., Ut Pictura Poesis: The Humanistic Theory of Painting (New York, 1967), P. 48 Google Scholar.