Tátrai Vilmos szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 95. (Budapest, 2001)

LICHNER, MAGDOLNA: Additional material to establishing the subject of Jacopo Bassano's Sleeping shepherd

II. "...sensum superiorum cum inferioribus..."

34 Still I must mention one more interpretation of the Budapest painting in question, the latest one, as both it and its refutation may prove fruitful. The book by Bernard Aikema

35 endeavours to oversee the whole oeuvre, and it also tries to solve the riddle, to ascertain the subject of the Budapest Sleeping Shepherd. He claims that the two shepherds in the picture embody two antithetic ways of behaviour, two moralities. In the 'bedraggled' shepherd on the left he sees the negative character, while the child on the right represents the better part, he is the 'good shepherd".

36 However, hardly any negative trait can be discovered in the figure of the sleeping shepherd, he isn't grotesque or ugly, he is no more dirty or ragged than the other one, and his face in the selfabandon of sleep shines as innocently as that of his companion. They are equally simple souls in a landscape bathed in the light of the setting sun. Our scholar, who moves a vast critical apparatus, makes it clear in the first pages that his endeavour is a consistent interpretation which will give the key to the iconography of the Bassanian oeuvre.

37 He believed to have found that key in the notions of tepiditas

38 or sluggishness in worship and of the related acedia or sloth (Aikema mostly uses them as synonyms) being the hotbed of carnal temptations, the latter being one of the seven capital sins. Their counterparts are ardor or enthusiasm and zelus or zeal. He moves battalions of depreciatory epithets

39 while he analyses the individual pictures in order to prove his antagonisms by the attitudes of the characters, yet his iconological method, though consistent, is hardly creditable. The quotations and parallels he uses to support his arguments, however intriguing they are,

40 often 34 Paolo Berdini highlighted the expression from Ludovico (Juan Luis) Vives' commentaries on Virgil, The Religious Art of Jacopo Bassano. Painting as Visual Exegesis, Cambridge 1997, 20. The original text of Vives is: "...exuperat omnem sensum superiorum cum inferioribus, ferocium cum mansuetis, astutorum cum simplicibus, exaequante omnia caritate, et reddente tuta omnia et secura. Bucolici Vergilii interpretatio. Venice, 1537.2.43. Quoted by Patterson, A., Pastoral and Ideology. Virgil to Valéry, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1987,91. 35 Aikema, B., Jacopo Bassano and His Public. Moralising Pictures in an Age of Reform, ca. 15351600, Princeton 1996. 36 Aikema op. cit. 96-97. 37 Aikema op. cit. (note 35.) 4. 38 He quotes from the theological writings of Battista da Crema, a follower of Savonarola, basing his reasoning thereon. Aikema op.cit. (note 35), 9., 39 Qualifications (partly mentioned above) are bedraggled, sloth, lust (p. 19.), wanton (p. 20.), wicked shepherd, of the same shepherd: shabbily dressed, scruffy man. The recurrent antagonisms of Aikema are: true pilgrim - false pilgrim, godfearing - godless (p. 20 etc.). His epithets are unjustifiable compared to the rendering of the characters in question. For example, on p. 53 he alludes to the sleeping dog in the Adoration of the Shepherds as a known symbol of acedia, while on p. 78 he writes of the same dog: "which we know Jacopo used often to underscore the moral turpitude of particular acts or individuals"; the peasant family in The Parable of the Sower from tha Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Madrid for him are "perfidi villani", perfid peasants (pp. 77-78). 40 Aikema op. cit. (note 35.) 21. Note 72-73 and 81-82. Of the quoted texts reproving peasants the fragment of a satyric verse from the end of 15th century (Alfabeta sopra li Villani) or a line from Alvise Cornaro's Vita sobria, for istance, are equally applicable to peasants, paupers and mendicants.