| Artist | Titian or Giorgione |
|---|---|
| Year | c. 1510 |
| Type | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 118 cm × 138 cm (46 in × 54 in) |
| Location | Louvre Museum, Paris |
The Pastoral Concert is an oil painting attributed to one of the Italian Renaissance masters Titian or Giorgione. It is located in the Louvre Museum in Paris, France.
The painting was originally attributed to Giorgione, but modern critics assign it more likely to his pupil Titian, due to the figures' robustness which was typical of his style.[1] It is also likely that Giorgione (whose works included elements such as music, the pastoral idleness and simultaneous representation of the visible and invisible) began the work, and then, after his death in 1510, it was finished by Titian.[1]
The work was owned by the Gonzaga family, perhaps inherited from Isabella d'Este: it was later sold to Charles I of England and then to French banker Eberhard Jabach; he in turn sold it to Louis XIV of France in 1671[2]
The painting was also attributed to Palma the Elder and Sebastiano del Piombo.[3]
In 1863, French painter Edouard Manet painted his Le déjeuner sur l'herbe after watching the Pastoral Concert in a visit to the Louvre museum.[4]
The painting portrays three young people on a lawn, playing, while next to him a standing woman is pouring water from a marble basin. Both the women are naked, aside from two light vests; the two men, who are talking, are dressed with contemporary costumes. In the wide background is a shepherd and, among the vegetation, a far landscape.
The subject was perhaps the allegory of poetry and music: the two women would be an imaginary apparition representing the ideal beauty, stemming from the two men's fantasy and inspiration. The woman with the glass vase would be the muse of tragic poetry, while the other one would be that of the pastoral poetry. Of the two playing men, the one with the lute would represent the exalted lyric poetry, the other being an ordinary lyricist, according to the distinction made by Aristotle in his Poetics. Another interpretation suggests that the painting is an evocation of the four elements of the natural world (water, fire, earth and air) and their harmonic relationship.[4]