Asleep in the Grass of Arcady: Giulio Campagnola's Dreamer

Abstract

The rarest figural view is that involving a protagonist seen from behind, not directing a look outward toward the spectator. One such example is Giulio Campagnola's engraving of a solitary woman in a landscape, seen in a three-quarters rear view (fig. i). Radically stripped of iconographic attributes as it is, this print is less narrative, or even lyrical, in its presence than many pastoral compositions. Here there is no warm, atmospheric, and mellow world of wish-fulfillment as in the DresdenVenus.Giulio offered no paper Giorgione but rather a place in which lush vegetation clashes against sharp turrets, and no Cupid attends upon dormant, soft female flesh. Giulio distanced the image from predigested literary conventions. Yet the art historical inclination is to assimilate Giulio's work to Giorgione's, and furthermore to understand Giorgione's importance as consisting in his visualization of the hitherto literary world of pastoral.Ut pictor poe'siscan be too handy an axiom.