Tátrai Vilmos szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 95. (Budapest, 2001)
LICHNER, MAGDOLNA: Additional material to establishing the subject of Jacopo Bassano's Sleeping shepherd
of the soul over the body (currus animae) 69 . Endymion was used as model both to depicting melancholy and to representing the biblical shepherds. 70 Jacopo's drawing of Jacob's dream is a good biblical instance to this: "Ego dormio, cor meum vigilat" (I am asleep but my heart keeps vigil). 71 I do not want to state that the Budapest picture is an illustration to Virgil's eclogues. It can not be proved that Bassano had read the commentaries, or Marsilio Ficino's works, for that matter, yet the Eclogues I and IV must have been among the inspiring factors, because those who ordered pictures from him, and who possibly appreciated the commentaries, influenced his choice of subjects in an indirect way. The painting Sleeping Shepherd in Budapest - which, as I am convinced, once contained a background scene connected with Abraham's story - is in fact a representation of the two bearings exemplified by the simple shepherds: of the soul that in sleep is freed from its bodily existence, and of the busy youth in his worldly pursuits. Consequently the picture could be a model for representing both biblical and Virgilian shepherds. In Jacopo Bassano's art the paintings executed in the 1550s and 1560s are examples both of the bucolic genre and of biblical pastoral. To those pictures the appropriate term is a sophisticated realism that uses the well known biblical episodes only as hints, and depicts them in a genre-like setting full of lyricism. The definition used first to Virgil's text applies to the painter as well: he preferred simplicity and sensual representation - "...sensum superiorum cum inferioribus..." MAGDOLNA LICHNER Translated by István Tótfalusi 69 Meiss, M., Sleep in Venice: Ancient Myths and Renaissance Proclivities, in The Painter's Choice: Problems in the interpretation of Renaissance Art, New York 1976. 212-239., and Berdini op.cit. (note 34.) 53-59. As sources of information Berdini names De Anima (Pl 2:742) by Tertullianus, commentaries of Servius to Georgics (3.391) and the tractatus of Ficino, M. Theologiapiatonica de immortalitate animarum (ed. M. Schivone, Bologna, 1966. 2:186-97). The ancient prototype of the dreaming youth is, among others: The Endymion sarcophagus. New York, Metropolitan Museum. 70 For the discussion of the issue in connection with the board (ca. 1520) attributed to Titian's school, now in the possession of Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania and with Cima da Conegliano's Endymion (1506. Parma, Galleria Nazionale) see Rosand op.cit. (note 56.) 44-54. and Berdini op.cit. (note 34.) 53-55. Several drawings by Titian and mainly those of the Campagnolas are connected with this subject. Rosand op.cit. (note 56.) gives a comprehensive list of literature; see also the list of sources in Berdini op.cit. (note 34.) on the Christian interpretation of the state of sleep. 71 S. de Covarrubias Orozco: Emblémás Morales. 1610 1. nr. 15 and II. nr. 92.
