Passionate singer

Veneto school

Attributed to Giorgione

(Castelfranco Veneto c. 1477 - Venice 1510)

The painting is traditionally considered to be a pendant of the Flute Player, also housed in the Galleria Borghese (inv. 130); both are recorded by Manilli in 1650 as works by Giorgione, but such an attribution has never been accepted unanimously by critics. The pictorial technique seems to deviate from Giorgione’s style of brushwork, leading some to suggest that the works are “in the style of” the Master, in line with typical early 17th-century taste. In terms of their expressiveness and choice of costumes, the two performers exemplify a type of portraiture with a distinctly caricatural tone.

Object details

Commentary

The Passionate Singer can be identified as one of the paintings that first appeared in Cardinal Scipione Borghese’s inventory, dated around 1633, as item “no. 43. Two paintings on canvas of two Jesters, one in a shirt with a red hat, the other with a slashed tunic and a fipple flute in his hand; gilded frame, 4 high by 3 wide, Giorgione” (Corradini 1998, no. 43). They were still recorded together, with the same description, in the Villa Pinciana guide by Manilli in 1650 (p. 68). The other, also in the collection, is The Flute Player, traditionally considered its pendant (inv. 130). Manilli’s description brings out perfectly the characters of the two performers, with their highly expressive features and clothes that resemble those often worn by shepherds or soldiers, rather than by two musicians of high status. 

The Singer, portrayed half-length, is wearing a white shirt with a rounded neckline and a large red hat; a yellow garment, probably a cloak, lies on his left shoulder. His eyes are turned towards the viewer, his head is tilted slightly backwards, and his right hand is held to his chest; the almost dreamy facial expression reveals his emotional involvement. Restoration work in 1953 revealed a horizontally oriented head in the background. It was of similar quality to that of the main subject of the canvas and was considered to be by the same hand, but it was covered over during subsequent restoration.

The attribution to Giorgione of the pair of paintings, which persisted in the Borghese inventories up to the 1833 Fideicommissary listing, when Giovanni Bellini’s name appeared, is still being debated today. In 1893, Venturi (p. 97) put forward the name of Domenico Capriolo, which was endorsed by Berenson (1894, p. 91) and Fiocco (1829, pp. 124-125). Longhi, however, after a temporary shift in favour of Domenico Mancini, pointed out the Giorgione-like qualities of the two paintings when speaking with the director of the Museo Borghese, though he noted the slightly inferior quality of the Flute Player, possibly due to excessive retouching. Attribution to Giorgione, accepted by Della Pergola (1955, pp. 112-113, nos. 201-202), has not been definitively endorsed by critics, however, although the Giorgionesque association has prevailed up to the present day, as evidenced by attempts to identify the artist of the canvases as an imitator (Robertson 1955) or as the 17th-century artist Pietro della Vecchia (Coliva 1994, pp. 56-58; Anderson 1996, p. 340; Herrmann Fiore 2006, table 130; for a summary of the attribution debate, see Dal Pozzolo 2009, pp. 442-444).

It has been suggested that the two portraits, obviously twinned, were originally part of a single composition, specifically a three-figure composition by Giorgione that, according to the inventory, is known to have been in the Vendramin collection in the 1660s (Della Pergola 1955, pp. 112-113, nos. 201-202). This theory, which was later discredited, nevertheless revealed the link between the two canvases and the Concerto in the Mattioli collection (on this subject, see Ballarin 1993, pp. 344-347; Dal Pozzolo 2009, pp. 442-444), which some have assigned to the last phase of Giorgione's production, making it an essential point of comparison in the critical debate on the Borghese pendants, also in terms of style and chronology

Pier Ludovico Puddu