Page 36 - Studio International - March 1972

the pavement. Between pavement and chess- middle term occupies the central focus of the extraordinary that Vasari's description, which
board there is a clear metonymic relation, in that work. So far so good. But when I last examined has always been accepted as applying to the
the chess-board is contiguous with the pavement the picture a few months ago, I had the strong Edinburgh picture, should make no mention of
and reproduces its squared pattern. But there is feeling that there was something else there. the Allegory ! And there again, how interesting
also a metaphoric relation, in that the chess- Without being able to formulate my that it should linger upon the pair of lovers who
board with its strictly controlled pieces dissatisfaction with the work as an allegory, I had already seemed to me so centrally the key
metaphorically represents the 'real' world of the found myself pre-occupied with two questions : to the work!
pavement where the perspectivally reduced first of all, the strange and, it seemed to me, I think that at this point I should mention
human figures seem subject to the same binding quite overpoweringly sensual, effect of the two certain details in the composition of the picture,
laws.14 lovers, and secondly the mathematical mystique, which are of some importance. The shepherd is
From this very summary comparison of the if I can put it like that, of the composition. Why seated on the ground, along the length of the
methods of Panofsky and Schefer, I should like were there three plump babies, two of them picture, so to speak, with his back leaning
to pass on to more or less autobiographical asleep, why was the old man holding two skulls against the left-hand vertical. His legs are
ground, and describe my own critical reactions in his hands, and why, above all, was the girl stretched out, with the right knee somewhat
to another picture by Titian, the Three Ages of bending towards the shepherd with two flutes raised. The girl is bending over him, holding the
Man, now in the National Gallery of Scotland at between her fingers ? two flutes a little way from her lips. You
Edinburgh. I present it less because of any Gradually this mathematical complication of remember Vasari's strange equivocation, `certi
ultimate value, since I am very far from having the theme, so to speak, began to seem the most flauti'; the ambiguity seems curious when
seen all that has been said about this picture, important thing about the work. But, in related to the fact that the girl has,
than as a demonstration of method, and an accordance with the mystical beliefs of the unequivocally, two-but becomes
indication of how different methods can result in Russian Futurist Velimir Khlebnikov, I was comprehensible when we take into account
quite glaringly different interpretations. convinced that the numerical order underlying another flute in the picture, which the shepherd
The Three Ages of Man introduces itself, the work of art, though of extreme complexity, holds, resting it on the ground with his right
through its title, as an allegorical picture. It is ultimately makes sense. At this point I decided hand.
even, perhaps, a very obvious allegory. Three to look in Vasari for a perhaps unexpected You may think I am rather aimlessly
figures or groups of figures take their place in it, comment on the picture, and what I found went labouring this interpretation. But delay seems to
a trio of plump babies, a pair of lovers and an old as follows : Titian returned to Venice and painted me utterly necessary in the elucidation of this
man. As in the Allegory of Prudence, the for the father-in-law of Giovanni da Castel of picture, since its structure is so much a matter
progression from youth to age is vividly Bologna 'un pastore ignudo ed una forese che of ambiguity, displacement and concealment.
presented in one pictorial instant. As in the gli porge certi flauti perchè suoni, con un The final revelation of what is displaced and
Allegory, the figure age recedes into the bellissimo paese.'15 'A naked shepherd and a - concealed derives, or can derive, from a simple -
distance, and the motif of childhood or youth is country-girl who offers him certain flutes in reading of the work in terms of triangular
shown as aspiring towards maturity, while the order that he may make a sound' - how structures-old man to two skulls, girl to two