Beyond the horizon: Domenico Campagnola
In comparison with Giulio’s print of the Old shepherd in a landscape dated between 1510-15 and bearing in mind that they are made in different medium and the drawing can always be more spontaneous that a print, stylistically speaking the contrast is remarkable. The whole compositional structure is no longer stiff and artificial but freer and dynamic, placing the main figures at the right side of the sheet, the other figures in the centre and the village or town at the right side as well, leaving the left side surprisingly ‘empty’ with just a tree and a house in the distant. The modelling and smother shades give a better sense of three-dimensionality and space between the figures and the landscape. The planes are not created in almost parallel lines like in Giulio’s print, but with diagonal lines and the figures call our attention. The two male figures arose our curiosity by avoiding our gaze and being heard as well as for the pointing finger which destine cannot be found. The other figures also point or gesticulate while observing, interacting in this way with the landscape and making of it an essential component in the narrative.
Some elements resemble Giorgione’s Il Tramonto. The topography of the landscape and the sunset in the horizon clearly indicate the contact of Domenico with Giorgione’s work either personally or through Giulio’s copies. Specially interesting is the element of the sunset that, although it cannot produce an effect as complex as in Giorgione’s oil painting, still recreates a certain ambient or ‘mood’ of poetic characteristics. Nevertheless, there are elements that indicate the influence of Titian like, for instance, the two boys in the foreground are closer to the male figures of Titian’s Concert Champêtre (c. 1510) with the element of secrecy that the figures create. Domenico goes even further than Titian by exaggerating this feeling with the gesture of whistling and concealing the faces of the protagonists. Titian will be the artist who develops the Giorgione’s innovative concept of landscape up to the point of being considered by some scholars the inventor of the modern landscape that is developed in the next centuries. Although still in his first years as an artist -although already famous-, Titian becomes Domenico’s main competitor and he keeps adopting his elements and, like in this drawing, taking them a step further.
The drawing had been dated in 1517 so it is one of the works that made the young Domenico a known artist in the Venetian artistic circles. The fact of the drawing being signed declares that it was considered a finished work alike a painting or a print. Most likely it was created for a group of intellectual collectors who would appreciate these ‘secondary’ pieces of art. The subtle homosexual connotation, completely absent from Virgil’s Eclogues and Sannazaro’s Arcadia, stresses a possible intellectual collector with a humanist and Neoplatonic education.
DOMENICO CAMPAGNOLA:
Domenico Campagnola (1500-1564) was the son of German parents living in Venice but after their death in 1512 he was adopted by Giulio Campagnola (1482-1515?). Then he was apprenticed at the famous local artist’s workshop, adopting his step-father’s surname not only as an indicative of their legal status but also as a sort of ‘artistic brand’ with a straight continuation of a kind of particular style or patterns. A custom very usual at the time. Indeed, his activity begins to be documented in 1515, the same year in which Giulio steps off the artistic stage. Indeed, around 1517 he is already considered a master with no less than a dozen of signed prints.
Domenico is considered the first artist in create fully finished, signed and dated drawings in ink conceived as works of art for their own sake destined to a small circle of learned patrons and collectors.
Although his style started being similar to his step-father’s, soon he adopted the advances brought by Giorgione (1482-1510) with a better reconstruction of space and a softer and more naturalistic modelling. After Giorgione and Giulio deaths, the talented young Titian (1488-1576) became the main source of inspiration and competitiveness for the Venetian engraver. As the years passed, Domenico focused almost solely on drawing,
However, Titian swiftly became one of the undisputable artists of the Serenissima, and in 1525, Domenico moved to his step-father’s birthplace, Padua, which academic milieu was a favourable and potential opportunity for Domenico’s intellectual prints success. Nevertheless, it seems that this did not work and he could not find the type of patrons and collectors like those from Venice and his known works since then are mainly paintings or frescoes on religious subjects for diverse churches of the city. He died in 1564.
Bibliography
Saccomani, E., ‘Domenico Campagnola disegnatore di “Paesi”: dagli esordi alla prima maturità’ in Arte Veneta, XXXVI, Editote Alfieri, Venice 1982, pp. 81-99.
Rearick, W. R, Il disegno veneziano del Cinquecento, Electa, Milan 2001.
