CF STUDIES JOURNAL 09 - Flipbook - Page 112
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A gamechanger for Giorgione
A gamechanger for Giorgione
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As Jane Stevens Crawshaw reveals in her recent
book on plague hospitals in Venice,44 the surviving
documentation reveals more about the journey made
to the Lazaretto, rather than about how news of deaths
was reported to loved ones in Venice. Some sufferers
from the plague had time to make a will, and for
some, small slips of paper were sent as death notices to
the family. Not many of these survive, but enough to
speculate that this might have been the source for the
writer of the inscription. On the Lazaretto Vecchio
there was a permanent staff, a prior, a chaplain,
doctors, medical personnel and those who buried the
dead. There is no known instance of a person who died
from the plague being buried anywhere other than on
the island for fear of contamination. Thus, the story
that Giorgione’s body was buried in the Barbarella
family tomb at Castelfranco (now no longer extant
according to a lost inscription on a lost tomb), a local
legend frequently repeated by chroniclers, appears
impossible, even though Giorgione may have belonged
to that family, as Carlo Ridolfi maintained.
Fig. 12 / Detail of fig.
11, reverse of the Caupo
Altarpiece, with drawings
of female figures and
putto, reminiscent of the
frescoes on the Fondaco
dei Tedeschi.
Fig. 13 / Giorgione, Nude
Female Figure, ca. 1508,
detached fresco, 250 x
140 cm, Venice, Gallerie
dell’Accademia.
The last drawing by Palma Giovane suggests
possibilities for our understanding of the inscription
accompanying the drawing by Giorgione in the Sydney
Dante, but still there are no easy solutions among
Giorgione’s associates as to who wrote the inscription at
his death. This brief outline of artists’ literary activities
and the books they owned reveals that commenting
on texts and writing were very much part of their
daily lives, much more so than has been understood
previously.
