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

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

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL TO ESTABLISHING THE SUBJECT OF JACOPO BASSANO'S SLEEPING SHEPHERD I. "...cose pastorali..." William Roger Rearick, in the catalogue for the exhibition commemorating the 400th anniversary of Jacopo Bassano

's death in 1992, wrote the following: "Among the most mysterious of Jacopo's pictures is the pastoral canvas that seems simply to represent peasants and their stock in a landscape. Given the improbability that in the cinquecento a fine picture on this scale would be essentially subjectless, a mere slice of agrarian life, we must search further for its subjects."

1 It was this mysteriousness that induced more than one researcher to attempt to establish the subject of the Budapest picture, and not to be satisfied with a general title of 'pastoral scene'. As to the painting from the Esterházy collection

2

, earlier attributed to Girolamo Bassano, Alessandro Ballarin proved in 1990 that it had been painted by Jacopo Bassano, probably about 1568.

3 (fig. 59) He supposes that the painting has a mythological subject, namely it shows the young Mercurius stealing from Apollo's cattle guarded by the hundred-eyed Argus. The denial of his idea was summarized by Paolo Marini when the work was exhibited in Frankfurt: the sleeping shepherd could hardly be associated with the Argos of Hundred Eyes

4

, and the gesture of the boy revealed more familiarity than stealthiness. Anyway, Jacopo Bassano's oeuvre contains singularly few pictures inspired by classic mythology.

5 Rearick gave no names to the characters, instead he tried to ascertain the iconographie place and type of the representation in Jacopo's oeuvre. In the painting he sees the evocation of the month of August, an early instance of pictures representing seasons or months, much in vogue in the middle 1570s. He refers to the resemblance of the canvas to the illustration for the same month in the so-called Grimani Breviary from the 1 Rearick, W.R., The Life and Works of Jacopo dal Ponte, called Bassano, ca. 1510-1592, in Jacopo Bassano, c. 1510-1592, Fort Worth, Texas 1993, 126. 2 Museum of Fine Arts, inv.nr.119. Oil, canvas, 58,6x99,1 cm. Pigler, A., Museum der Bildenden Künste Budapest: Katalog der Galerie Alter Meister, Budapest 1968,

1. 46. II. 101 k. 3 Ballarin, A., Jacopo Bassano, Incontro di Giacobbe e Rachele al Pozzo, in Bicluino ad Algardi: Pittura e scultura a confronto, ed. Romano, G., Torino 1990. 117-145. 4 Von Raffaello bis Tiepolo, Italianische Kunst aus der Sammlung des Fürstenhauses Esterházy, Frankfurt am Main 1999, 175-176. 5 Marini, P, Jacopo Bassano Seen Anew, Jacopo Bassano c. 1510-1592, Fort Worth, Texas, 1993. 2930. See further items 58. (Centaurs), 107. (Orpheus Among the Beasts) and 150. (Penelope) guoted by the inventary of the Dal Ponte house taken after Jacopo's death: Inventario de' quadri di Pittura ritrovati nella Casa del q. Eccellente Si. Giacomo da Ponte, 27 April 1592, in Verci, G.B., Notizie intorno alia vita e alle opère de' Pittori Scultori e Intaglatori della Città di Bassano, Venezia 1775, 91-188.