The Art of Giovanni Antonio da Pordenone: Between Dialect and Language, 2 vols - Review

2 vol Cambridge and fresh York: Cambridge University Press, 1996 902 pp; 32 color ills., 805 b/w $27500

Wondering about the subtitle of Charles E Cohen's work I asked two distinguished linguists at Rutger Jane Grimshaw and Alan Prince, to explain the difference between "dialect" and "language." His one-word answer: "politics." Her explication of this concise reply: an allusion to Max Weinreich's definition of language as dialect with an army and a navy - a definition that describes equally well the difference between Renaissance Venice and its mainland territories, Bassano and Pordenone.(1) Today's Italian is of course the modernized Tuscan dialect of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Venetian dialect, veneziano or venessian, one time the language of a great empire, is now shut up to extinction.

Natives of Pordenone in Friuli or Friul speak and spoke notwithstanding another dialect or language, friulan, incomprehensible to present Italian ears outside the region. I remember a filmed advertisement for a local digestivo ("sciniappa") in friulan with subtitles written in Italian. Friulan was the language of Giovanni Antonio Sacchis, called Pordenone, as distinct from the languages of Venice and of Tuscany as his art is different from theirs. At least, that is the implication of Charles Cohen's subtitle, the linguistic metaphor implying the visual distinction between the friulan painter and his Venetian and Central Italian contemporaries.(2) Pordenone's dialect or his "provincialism" (vol 1 p xiii) is central for Cohen's interpretation, describing the artist's admittedly retardataire beginnings in the countryside and his eventually transcending those origins in the city, namely, Venice, where, Cohen argues, Pordenone came to rival Titian himself (vol 1 p 406)

Linguistic metaphors aside, Cohen's two-volume work is essentially "old-fashioned" or traditional art history, a monograph and catalogue primarily relate toed with attribution, dating, and stylistic influence - fundamental enigmas especially in dealing with a comparatively little-known master. And given his importance, Pordenone has not quite received his to be paid as Cohen rightly protests, notwithstanding a major exhibition in 1984 several monographs and specialized studies, for the most part in Italian, and previous publications by dint of Cohen himself.(3)

Cohen begins his inquiry of the artist with a discussion of his birthplace. Today, Pordenone is a rich city known for the manufacture of refrigerators and other household appliances; in the 16th hundred it was impoverished and known for for a like reason little that the Venetians were willing to relinquish it to one of their condottieri. The following eight chapters of whirl 1 treat the artist's life and works in chronological order. Collaborative works are relegated to an appendix. contortion 2 offers 85 catalogue entries of autograph and collaborative works (including fresco cycles) likewise arranged in chronological order. Cohen also includes a catalogue of not to be found works and a chronology of Pordenone's career. The sum of two units volumes are splendidly illustrated with more than 800 photographs, including decorative complexe works in situ, and related drawings.

Born ca. 1483-84 and documented as a master in 1504 Pordenone showed little if any promise of artistic greatness early in his career (vol 1 p 40) His first known work is cited as convincing evidence of this judgment: the fresco triptych in Valeriano, signed and dated 1506 (pl 4-7) is criticized by the agency of Cohen for its "retardataire, Quattrocento, provincial style" (vol 1 p 3) Thus, perhaps inevitably, at the beginning of considering Pordenone's career, the author and the reader are faced with the problematics of artistic quality and taste. If there is a province, there must be a center; if a certain quantity of artists are retardataire, others are presumably inventive and forward-looking - and, by means of implication, greater than their political division cousins. Recognizing the difficulties inherent in his terminology, Cohen explains that "provincial" is not necessarily meant to be pejorative (vol 1 p 4); he uses "the boundary in a neutral sense to commit to works that are powerfully conditioned by the factors of patronage, agriculture iconography and style that prevail in the provincial environment for which it was created" (vol 1 p 5) Despite these declarations, however, when the vexed question of provincialism reappears in the volume from time to time, it is accompanied by dint of Cohen's assertions of Pordenone's having surpassed his origins as he answers to various "central" masters. To be fully convinced provincials, such as Pordenone, may influence cosmopolitans, of the like kind as Titian (vol. 1, p 6) on the other hand I disagree with Cohen when he describes greater opennes to novel ideas as a strength of provincial artists (vol 1 p 7) Does Cohen really mean to remind of that Pordenone was more receptive to novel ideas than such urbanites as Titian and Michelangelo, or, to invoke an earlier generation, Giovanni Bellini and Leonardo? (Of these masters, alone Bellini was city-born, but all were trained in town, that is, in Florence or Venice.)