A Self-Portrait of GrecoAuthor(s): Edgar WindReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 3, No. 1/2 (Oct., 1939 - Jan.,1940), pp. 141-142Published by: The Warburg InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/750200 .Accessed: 22/04/2012 05:28

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MISCELLANEOUS NOTES 141

turban, is all of one facture and together with the sea and ships belongs to the late period. It is not possible to see whether the cloud of smoke on the left, which is a later addition by Titian, covers anything different.

The nude woman on the right is the part of the picture which has most suffered and no sure conclusion can be drawn as to its date, but as far as it is possible to judge she had been repainted in later Titian style. Two dark vertical marks under the paint of her thigh may perhaps be pentimenti, possibly of her left arm; her right arm conceivably was originally further across her body, if a dark mark which runs from the outside of the elbow to the inside of her wrist is a pentimento. Her hair seems originally to have stretched further down her back.

The stone slab in front of this figure has at least been painted over in the late period; the stone behind with the cross and chalice are also later. There are pentimenti of branches right and left of the tree im- mediately above the head of the nude figure; the broken tree on the right perhaps originally extended beyond the break; the paint of the sky across its top is certainly of the late period. It is difficult to see at what period the snakes have been painted, but they are also probably late and are certainly all of the same facture.

NEIL MACLAREN

A SELF-PORTRAIT OF GRECO

n a recent publication on Greco,1 no less than I6 pictures are listed as

hypothetical self-portraits. Though there is no evidence whatsoever to support any of these conjectures, the majority of the portraits chosen are of a similar type, and give a fair impression of what Greco ought to have looked like, to satisfy his modern interpreters. His 'imaginary portrait' is that of an ardent mystic, an ecstatic visionary, with the noble and delicate features (though he was a Greek) of a Spanish grandee. It is not surprising, in view of this ideal, that the one portrait which I think has a claim to be regarded as a true self-portrait, has not been recognised or accepted as such by the majority of students. It shows a fat

and sluggish, almost amorphous face with a rather morose expression (P1. 25a).

It has always been known that this head represents a painter; for it concludes the portrait group in the lower right corner in one of the early versions of the "Expulsion from the Temple" where it is joined to the portraits of Titian, Michelangelo and Clovio.2 Titian's and Michelangelo's faces are easily recognised, and that of the third man is exactly the same as on Greco's separate portrait of Clovio,3 his patron and master. In company with Titian and Michelangelo, Clovio's portrait assumes a programmatic significance. To combine the colour of Titian with the design of Michelangelo was a famous Venetian precept of the period, to which Clovio, who was called a piccolo e nuovo Michelangelo, was bound to subscribe.4 Greco's discipleship of Clovio was implicitely a discipleship of Titian and Michelangelo. What then would be more natural than to assume that the man who follows Clovio in the picture is Greco himself who thus assigns to his art its legitimate place in a genealogical line of descent.

The visual evidence confirms our argu- ment. The portrait is not only placed in the right corner of the picture, like an artist's signature, but it also shows a feature characteristic of self-portraits : the artificially hidden left arm which is really the right arm engaged in painting. Moreover, the man points to himself: the typical gesture of self-portraits.

No doubt, all these features would have been noticed long ago and correctly inter- preted, had not an eighteenth century author started the tradition that this figure is meant to be Raphael.5 As a true eclectic in the academic style of his century, he probably felt that where Titian and Michel- angelo are assembled, Raphael ought not to be missing. But this hypothesis must be rejected, not only because the features of the man have no resemblance to those of Raphael, but also because, if Raphael had been represented, he would have been placed before Clovio and not behind him. Moreover, Raphael is an artist who-in contradistinction to Michelangelo, Titian and

I Phaidon Edition.

2 Formerly Yarborough Coll., now Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, Minn., U.S.A.

3 Naples, Museo Nazionale. * Cf. Justi, "Die Anfinge des Greco" in Zeitschrift

f. bild. Kunst, 1897. 5 Catalogue of the Buckingham Gallery, 1758 (cf. Justi,

loc. cit.).

142 MISCELLANEOUS NOTES

Clovio--had no influence on Greco's style. Curiously enough, the spell of the I8th

century tradition was broken for a short time by a man who then distrusted and recanted his better judgment. In an article written in 1897, Carl Justi confessed that six years earlier he had believed this to be a self- portrait by Greco, but that Hermann Grimm convinced him that it represented Raphael.1 One of the arguments used by Grimm and accepted by Justi was that the hand pointing to the man belonged to Clovio and not to the man himself. But this is a view which will hardly be accepted by anyone to-day. E. W.

1 Op. cit.

A POUSSIN-CASTIGLIONE PROBLEM

CLASSICISM AND THE PICTURESQUE IN I 7TH CENTURY ROME

The fact that Poussin was a Frenchman and the veneration in which he was

held in France during the century after his death tend to make us forget that for the first half of his career he was hardly known in France and was purely a member of the Roman school. Though it is true to say that most French painting of the later 17th century is a development from Poussin's mature classicism, if we wish to study the influence of his work before his journey to Paris in 1642 it is among the painters of Rome that we must look. Nor must we confine our attention to the purely classical artists of the Roman school. Poussin's romantic Venetian classicism2 bore fruit most immediately in the work of painters such as Testa who belonged like Poussin to the circle of Cassiano del Pozzo; but many other artists whose conception of painting seems at first sight to be remote from that of Poussin can be shown to have been in- fluenced by his work. Of the two leaders of the opposing factions in Rome in the middle of the 17th century, Andrea Sacchi, the chief of the academics, agreed with Poussin on many points of theory,3 and Pietro da Cortona, the head of the baroque faction, frequently reflects Poussin's style in his more classical canvases.

There were, however, other Italian artists who did not, properly speaking, belong to the Roman school, but who yet came under the spell of Poussin when in Rome. Among these one of the most interesting cases is Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, whose re- lation to Poussin has never been satisfact- orily studied.

At first sight Castiglione would not seem a likely artist to have been affected by contact with Poussin. His whole training was of a kind to prevent such an influence from 'taking.' Castiglione was brought up in the naturalistic tradition of Genoese painting, and was confirmed in the ten- dencies thus formed by the influence of Flemish naturalists such as Roos.4 Apart from these sources the most important influence on his development was that of Rembrandt, which came into operation through the master's early etchings, probably in the 30's.5 In the field of pure technique it seems likely that the sketches of Rubens and Van Dyck were not without their effect on the artist, whose rapid brush drawings in thin oil paint on paper recall the methods of the Flemish artists.

And yet it is certain that Castiglione was deeply affected by Poussin, for there are instances of his actually borrowing from paintings of Poussin on quite a large scale. The most interesting is perhaps the drawing of the "Saving of Pyrrhus" (P1. 26a),6 which is largely taken from Poussin's celebrated picture of the same subject in the Louvre. There is also evidence that in the I8th cen- tury the two painters were thought of as closely related. The English Connoisseur, published in 1766,' for instance, describes a picture by Castiglione, to which we shall return later, as "in the style of Nicola Pous- sin, which master (in his latter time) he particularly studied and imitated; and he succeeded therein so well, in this picture, both in the composition and drawing, that, was not his name upon it, several of the best judges have declared, they should not only have taken it for a true picture

2 For an analysis of Poussin's early classicism, cf. the present writer's note on the "Et in Arcadia ego," Art Bulletin, XX, 1938, p. 96.

S Cf. this Journal, I, p. 345 ff.

4 For a general account of Castiglione's life and work cf. Delogu, G. B. Castiglione, 1928, and the much more critical article by Lazareff, Staedel-Jahrbuch, VI, 1930, p. 96. Of the early sources the most useful is Soprani-Ratti, Vite dei Pittori, Scultori ed Architetti Genovesi, 1768, I, p. 308 ff.

5 Dr. Munz has shown that it is mainly the etchings of before 1634 that affected Castiglione. Cf. Die Kunst Rembrandts und Goethes Sehen, I934, p. 26 ff.

6 Windsor 4018. ' I, p. 4-

25

a-Greco, Self-Portrait with Titian, Michelangelo and Clovio. Detail from the "Expulsion from the Temple." Minneapolis, Institute of Arts (p. 141)

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b--Titian,~~~~~ ~~~~

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