Tátrai Vilmos szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 95. (Budapest, 2001)
LICHNER, MAGDOLNA: Additional material to establishing the subject of Jacopo Bassano's Sleeping shepherd
remain alien to the atmosphere of Jacopo's pictures and to the characters he depicted. In his endeavour to find and prove antagonisms Aikema frequently blurs the difference between the peasants treated with contempt in his sources and the shepherds praised for their simplicity and innocence. 41 Undoubtedly the pictures from the 1550s and 1560s portray increasingly shabby and ragged figures, but this is equally true to saints in meditation, biblical figures as Lazarus or to the peasants in The Parable of the Sower, 42 and neither their gestures nor their attires justify our looking at them as at bearers of some negative moral lesson. At the description of the Budapest painting Aikema remarks that he failed to find a narrative subject he could recognize in it, just as in the case of another 'mysterious' and allegedly subjectless picture, so far interpreted in so many different ways - the 'Two Dogs' painted for Antonio Zentani 43 (fig 70-71 ). The parallelism is reinforced by the fact that the Budapest painting also shows the two dogs, one leaning its head on its paws in repose, the other is sniffing like the one in the Uffizi picture. The way of their representation hardly displays the sharp contrast, either here or there, which is omnipresent in Aikemas analyses in search for some moral meaning. Rona Goffen in his presentation of the book 44 did not fail to call the attention to this rigidity of the analyses. The author himself purveys ammunition for criticism, as he is respectably liberal in quoting from the religious writings which were then in common use in Venice and well known also to Jacopo's patrons; he calls the attention to the connection between the pious movement of 'evangelism' pointing forward to Trident and Jacopo's pictures of biblical subject 45 Typical motifs in Jacopo's paintings are the 'perennial dogs'; their bearing imitates or repeats and so emphasizes the human gestures. The dog bending its back into an arch, literally "turning into itself, in the attitude of meditation appears strikingly often 41 Aikema op. cit. (note 37.) 21. Notes 72-73, 69-71 and 86. He contradicts himself in using positive and negative qualifications; namely, he distinguishes greedy and lustful (uomo carnale) peasants (represented as grotesque in Hans Sebald Beham's engravings) from shepherds of better renown, yet he consistently forgets his distinction (see for istance pp. 53 and 75). The text quoted to support the chosen state of shepherds in the Bible - the first recipients of the Annunciation (Ludolphus Carthausiensis, 1570, part 22. -Aikema op.cit. notes 75 and 10.) which also reinforces their positive morality is as follows: "Piu tosto a pastori ch'ad altra sorta di persone, prima perche erano poveri per i quali Christo veniva... Seconda perch'erano semplici... Terza perche erano vigilanti." 42 Lazarus and the Rich Man, ca. 1554. Cleveland, The Cleveland Museum of Arts; The Parable of the Sower, ca. 1562-63, Thysscn-Bornemisza Collection, Madrid, and ca. 1567 Springfield Museum of Fine arts, Jame Philip Gray Collection, respectively. 43 Muraro, op.cit. (note 32.) 70-71 (fol. 6v-73) "Due brachi, cioè cani solom." Of the two known pictures of similar subject the one in Louvre, Paris with its dating of ca. 1550 is supposed to be the earlier variant, the one in Galleria degli Uffizi, Firenze is maybe from about 1554. The connection between the painting and Zentani see: Feldman, M., City Culture and the Madrigal at Venice, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London 1995, 68-69 and 75-77. 44 The Art Bulletin, LXXX. 1998, 180-188. 45 Antonio Zentani's person is of great importance in this case. Zentani's biography: Cicognia, E.A., Delle iscrizioni veneziane, 6., 2:14—17, Venezia 1827: about his activity: Aikema, B. - Meijers, D., Nel regno dei poveri. Arte e storia dei grandi ospedali veneziani in età moderna 1474-1794, Venezia 1989, 132.
