Giovanni Morelli and His Friend Giorgione: Connoisseurship, Science and Irony

Giovanni Morelli (1816-1891), the nineteenth-century politician and connoisseur, is famous as the inventor of scientific connoisseurship. This reputation was validated by his 1880 attribution of the Dresden Sleeping Venus (Fig.1), which he gave to the sixteenth-century Venetian painter Giorgione. In 1890, Morelli attributed to the same artist a Portrait of a Woman (Fig.2), from the Borghese Gallery in Rome. When passing this judgement, the connoisseur referred to Giorgione as 'my friend'. All things being equal, this seems a strangely unscientific thing to do, and the obvious question is why? Perhaps Morelli was sincere; perhaps he genuinely believed himself to have a personal, intimate relationship with a painter who died 300 years before he was born. Or perhaps he was being ironic.Morelli advocated an 'experimental method' of connoisseurship, commonly understood as an inductive procedure modelled on scientific methods, the process involves the comparison of anatomical details, like hands and ears, identity of form indicating identity of authorship. The attribution of the Borghese Portrait is significant because Carol Gibson-Wood, in her excellent Studies in the Theory of Connoisseurship, concluded her analysis of Morelli with this painting, and interpreted it as a 'vivid illustration' that Morelli did not use 'Morellian method'. 1 However, this is a strange position to adopt as the attribution does appear to employ the 'experimental method'. The aim of this paper is to try to understand Gibson-Wood's complaint, and to explain why Morelli calls Giorgione his friend.The connoisseur begins his attribution of the Portrait by stating that the author of the painting was unknown. He continues:It represents a woman of about twenty-eight; her dark eyes, full of fire and passion, are overshadowed by a low and intelligent forehead; the arrangement of the dark brown hair on the temples recalls in a measure that of the Knight of Malta in the Uffizi;Here Morelli seems to be using Morellian method, drawing the reader's attention to anatomical details characteristic of Giorgione, before making a specific comparison to one of his positive attributions. Next, the text reproduces the application of an inductive science, taking the reader through two hypotheses which are tested and falsified. At first Morelli claims it may be by Dosso Dossi, but tells his reader that he had not examined the painting critically, and changes his mind because of the dark background, stone parapet and 'simplicity of representation'. He then proposes Sebastiano del Piombo, but this attribution is rejected because the portrait is too 'profound', and the form of the hand too 'quattrocento'. Morelli continues by describing how the sitter 'stands at a window holding a white handkerchief, and gazing out with a dreamy yeaning expression, as if seeking one for whom she waits'. Next, the connoisseur narrates the actual moment of attribution, the text becoming an expression of his immediate experience:One day, as I with a questioning and entranced mind, again stood before this mysterious picture, my own spirit encountered the spirit of the artist, which from these feminine lineaments looked out, and lo and behold, in that mutual touch it ignited suddenly like a spark, and I cried out in my joy: Only you, my friend, Giorgione can it be, and the picture answered: Yes, it's me.The text continues with an escalating list of more Morellian details - the eyebrows, the mouth - all of which 'speak for Giorgione'. Morelli finishes by claiming that only Giorgione could paint portraits of such astonishing simplicity, with such mystic charm, yet so deeply significant and profound.2 How can such an explicitly spiritual experience be considered scientific? And how can we explain the emotional and physical relationship between artist and connoisseur which is claimed in this text? It seems that an appeal to irony is one possible solution.It was not until Morelli was in his late fifties, in 1874, that he started publishing connoisseurship, beginning with several articles on the Borghese gallery in the Viennese journal Zeitschriftfur bildende Kunst. …