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

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

In the case of the two shepherds and the two dogs one may suppose that they are to represent two types of attitude - in this it may be really fruitful to expose the problem, and that duality is present throughout Bassano's oeuvre - but those characters are not necessarily polarized as positive and negative. As the literature quoted by Aikema indicates, vita activa and vita contemplativa as two possible pathways of Christian life and their balance were a central issue of the 16th century religious renewal also in Venice.

47 Side by side with contemplation or meditation, active life is an equally indispensable component. The active love of neighbours, the care for the helpless and for the bodily exposed walk parallel with the combat against indifference and with industrious activity. We may find more than one among Jacopo's works that represent those two ways of conduct in form of parable, so the issue is not alien to his art. The Lazarus in the Rich Man's House (ca 1554, Cleveland Museum of Art) is one of the characteristic examples where dogs, true to the text of the Scriptures, heal the beggar's sores in their own way. Only those two living beings seem to care for Lazarus (Luke 16:21), while in the axis of the painting we behold a child standing in meditation, surrounded by the indifferent company immersed in chat round the table. In the altarpiece of Saint Peter and Paul made around 1562-63 for the church Santa Maria deH'Umilta (Modena, Galleria Estenze) the attitudes of the saints also refer to a similar meaning: Peter sitting with closed eyes leans on the book with a posture flaccid and yet revealing inner tension, while Paul steps forward vigorously, raising the book in one hand and the sword in the other. Among later works we may point out the painting on Saint Anthony and Saint Martin (ca. 1578) where the coequality of the two bearings - a combative impulse hardly restrained even by piety and a solitary contemplation renouncing the world - are made evident by the adequate sources.

48 A painting, nearly coeval with the precedent one, a common product of Jacopo and Francesco as the signature (JAC. ET FRAC. FILIUS F.) shows, is the classic parable of the duality in question: Christ in the House of Mary and Martha.

49 In the 47 Aikema op. cit. (note 37.) 46. "The spiritual basis for social initiatives was provided by such reformminded clergy as Battista da Crema. These men advocated renewed religious intensity that was first of all to be achieved through meditation. In their view, however, exclusive concentration on the vita contemplativa was not the key to a perfect Christian life; it was also essential to combat tiepidezza, or spiritual tepidity, in the vita activa." The domain of meaning across ages of the related problems see in Lexikon der Christlichen Ikonographie II. ed. Kirschbaum, E. Wien 1968, 463^-68, under heading Vita activa and contemplativa. The row of authors and works quoted on this issue goes from Plato's Gorgias and Aristotle's Nichomachian Ethics (I 5. X 7.) via Seneca's De otio (7,1; 5,8) and St. Augustin 's Contra Faustum (22, 54s) to Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theol. II 2 q. 180 ss), Pico della Mirandola, Marsilio Ficino and Ignacio de Loyola. 48 See the fine analysis of Berdini with comparison of sources and representations, Berdini op.cit. (note 34.) 23-26., and Sulpicius Severus, Vita B. Martini, (Migne, J. P. Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Latina 20. 59-175,3.), as well as Athanasius, VitaAntonii (Migne, J. P. Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Graeca 26, 823-974). 49 Ca. 1576-77, Houston, Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation.