Italy xii--Sacred and Profane

The riddle it begs seems a no-brainer, or so I thought when I stumbled on this charmer at the end of a tour through the Borghese Gallery, one of Rome's most stunning museums. The title, the audio tour related, was The Sacred and the Profane; the artist was Titian; the story of the painting itself?--a wedding gift commissioned in 1514 by some nobleman. 

Okay, so it's one of those Renaissance paintings, mostly classical (but note the church in the background), but also one of those fascinating works of art that springs an allegory. One of the women represents "the sacred," and the other "the profane," or "the human."

Like I said, a no-brainer. One of these sister deities is quite unabashedly naked, just some lazy loincloth twisted about her privates. She's got to be "profane," right? The other, gorgeously dressed in what could possibly be some kind of bridal gown, is "sacred." There's sheer wantonness in all that flesh on the right, or so I thought, the old Calvinist. The woman on the left of whatever they're seated on is that model of womanhood from the book of Proverbs. I stood there and told myself that with just an hour-long tour of the Borghese, I'd become an art critic.

But the audio flashed "WRONG, WRONG, WRONG" to the obvious answer. It didn't really. I wasn't being quizzed. But the guide in the voice box made very clear that jumping to immediate conclusions underestimates the subtlety of the artist, as well as the thoughtful and even theological currents of his day. 

So there. 

Truth be known, the voice in my ear told me that what's obvious is waaaaay wrong. "The sacred" is naked as a jaybird, "the profane" is outfitted in that billowing gown, not because that billowing gown is the wardrobe of a harlot, but because Renaissance artists, with all the abandon of old died-in-the-wool Platonists, loved to worship "ideals." See, the naked woman on the right isn't nude, she's pure or ideal love. Go ahead and look--you'll not go blind.

Anyway, I stood corrected. And confused. Which is okay, I guess, because five hundred years (504 to be exact) which have passed since Titian, still a kid, painted this well-ordered collection of images for someone's wedding present, real art historians still go roundy roundy about who's what and why so.

And, you might ask (as I did), that little fat kid with his hand in the water?--who's that? and what is it they're sitting on anyway, a baptismal font? The cherub almost has to be Cupid; after all, this whole colorful project is about love. But what is it they're sitting on? It looks like a pretty standard sarcophagus. So death is in here too? And what's going on with the figures in the front--looks almost porn-y. 

Somehow--I don't know how--all of it took me back to Dante, who, when he was little older than that cherubic cupid, saw a sweet girl right there near the church he attended and was so blown away by her perfection that she remained, despite his marriage to a"real" woman, his perfectly human symbol of "the ideal," which is to say not just beauty, but the very essence of the divine (deliberately lower case, I would point out. If you're like me, you have some trouble with that jump, but Dante didn't.)

Look, if you get this painting, if you understand it from background to foreground, congratulations: you're the first. For 504 years, young Titian's intent in this stunning work has prompted endless debate between real, storied art historians. The Sacred and Profane offers an arrangement of symbols (trust me, there are many more than I've listed) that seem deliberately delivered confusingly on the canvas. 

What I know is this. All that fleshy stuff isn't porn-y. It's perfect. It's ideal. So there.

People in the know insist the riddle remains, after all these years: Sacred or Profane? Your answer to that question, I hate to say, is just as good as anyone else's. Or bad.

And thus the masterpiece, let me say, perhaps like love itself, remains a gorgeous mystery.