Tátrai Vilmos szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 95. (Budapest, 2001)
LICHNER, MAGDOLNA: Additional material to establishing the subject of Jacopo Bassano's Sleeping shepherd
The surmise is also confirmed by the witness of a further piece of art. The collection of Leopold William, in the 1650s, contained a picture very similar in composition to the Budapest Sleeping Shepherd, which also showed no more than two shepherds amidst their flock. David Teniers Jr. made a copy of this, now it is in the Metropolitan Museum. 30 The small-size picture of Teniers also contains a background scene, nevertheless here two figures are shown in the space behind the shepherd boy with a ram nearby, (fig. 69) In spite of the small size and the rough painting we can identify the subject as Abraham's sacrifice which is, this time again, an episode of Abraham's story. The Theatrum Pictorium (Schilder Thoonel) named the model of the copy as Jacopo Bassano's work. In Jacopo's oeuvre, in short, a type of composition can be specified which is connected with Abraham's story, and which consistently places the titular characters, depicted with a few strokes of the brush, in the background of a landscape; three of the pictures are alike in showing two shepherds - a sleeping young man and an alert child - in the foreground. To sum up, the engraving from the Giusti collection, the workshop piece in the Museum of Fine Arts, the Teniers copy and, last but not least, the copy turned up in art trade guide us to ascertaining the subject of the Budapest painting, hitherto registered as Sleeping Shepherd, as The Annunciation to Abraham. The biblical text of Abraham's story - and especially the part telling the sacrificing of Isaac - may give some hints as to the painter's inspiration (Gen. I. 22:3-5 and Gen. I. 12:1 ). We can understand why Jacopo Bassano was interested in the Old Testament stories, knowing that Pietro Aretino had translated the Latin text of Genesis to "vulgar" Italian and published it at Francesco Marcolini's in 1538, and it had four new impressions in Venice within a short time. 31 These must have been well known among the purchasers of paintings that evoked the episodes of Abraham's and Jacob's stories even as late as the 1550s and 1560s. 32 That was a period of changing style and of seeking new ways for Jacopo, the years during which the repertoire of the Bassano workshop for art trade formed its profile. 33 30 Inv. nr. 89.15.22, oil, wood, 16,8x22,9 cm (From the collection of Henry G. Marquand, purchased in 1889). 31 // Genesi 1538., 1539., 1541., completed with Noah's vision, 1545. Jacobson-Schutte, A. Printed Italian Vernacular Religious Books 1465-1550: a finding list, Genève 1983, 85. 32 About art trade and commissions see Marini loc.cit. (note 5.) 26-40; see also Muraro, ML, Libro secondo di dare ed avere, Venezia 1992. 33 Rearick loc. cit. (note 1.) 111-133.
