Pastoral Psychol (2011) 60:409420 DOI 10.

1007/s11089-011-0342-y

Desired, Repeated, Replaced: Power and Loss in Titians Noli Me Tangere

Sonia Waters

Published online: 5 March 2011 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011

Abstract The depiction of larger unconscious symbols, such as popular Gospel themes, can become particularized through the individual experience of the artist. They can express sublimated desires or displaced wishes, disguised like dream-elements in a work of art. Classical Freudian theory explores the process of sublimation and dream-work as two sides of the psychoanalytic interpretation of art. Titians Noli Me Tangere represents his efforts to sublimate his sexual and aggressive drives through this Gospel theme. It also suggests his Oedipal feelings of love and competition for his mentor Giorgione, as he anxiously maneuvered to take his mentors place. The death of his mentor and his own anxiety are worked out in his art, exemplified by his appropriation of Giorgiones style and the repetition of Giorgiones landscapes in Titians early work. As Titian reworked and radically changed this painting, he expressed his own ambivalence through this most ambivalent of Gospel scenes. Keywords Art history . Titian . Giorgione . Sublimation . Loss . Dream work . Sigmund Freud . Ernst Kris . Noli Me Tangere . Mary Magdalene . Mourning

Introduction The Renaissance is famous for transforming the Gospel themes and spiritual messages of medieval art through the warmth, passion and physical detail of humanism. Art historians note the striking level of emotion in the Noli Me Tangere images of the Italian Renaissance, as both Mary and Christ become idealized types of the fully human, in a tradition in which the accurate depiction of Christs physical nature was increasingly emphasized (Katsanis 2007, p. 411). But when is the private passion and physical detail of a Gospel theme so much more than a public spiritual message? Consider Titians early work, Noli Me Tangere (15121514).1 The two figuresJesus and Mary Magdaleneare set in a country scene. There is a landscape of buildings in the
1

This painting and others discussed below may be accessed through several websites on the Internet, for example, ArtinthePicture.com (Titians Paintings). S. Waters (*) Princeton Theological Seminary, PO Box 355, Princeton, NJ 08542-0803, USA e-mail: sonia.waters@ptsem.edu

410

Pastoral Psychol (2011) 60:409420

background to Mary Magdalenes side, while Jesus background is rolling hills, sky and distance. There is no tomb to locate the story, nor nimbus identifying the characters in the story. The forms are completely human. Jesus is almost naked, with a translucent cloth around his loins and the drapery of the shroud around his neck. Mary is only half-dressed, her large under-sleeves left flowing and uncovered, and her hair unbound. We know Jesus is the gardener only because of the gardening hoe in his left hand that acts as a block between the reuniting pair. But more importantly his loins are the focus of the painting, accentuated by the suggestive folds of the cloth, his own hand covering them, and Marys hand and eyes reaching for them. Mary and Jesus are separated by the garden hoe that mimics the angle and motion of Jesus body, while the single tree in the background mimics Marys angle of movement towards him. There is hardly any space between them: they make one complete form of circling, tense energy. He is turned towards her body. His upper body leans down towards her. She completes the circle, reaching upward for him. Her body and eyes are at groin level, reaching upwards towards the hand protecting his loins. Titian painted this Noli Me Tangere just as he was positioning himself to take his mentor Giorgiones place. Giorgione had died of the plague in 1510. Titians Noli Me Tangeres style so closely follows Giorgiones style that the painting is often attributed to his mentor. Noli Me Tangere also repeats the background of the first painting of Giorgiones that Titian completed after his mentors death, suggesting that Titian is expressing something about his own transition from son to father, assistant to master. In this article, I will explore how the themes and figures of the Noli Me Tangere are an expression of Titians Oedipal conflict with his mentor, and an expression of the anxiety that Titian felt as he mourned his mentor and yet prepared to take his place. The painting represents a range of paintings in this first decade after 1510 that repeat much of his mentor s style, and provide a way for Titian to manage his unconscious responses to the loss of his mentor, and to his efforts to claim his own phallic power as his successor. Noli Me Tangere transforms this Gospel theme into a symbol of the father s power, the power of creation, and the frozen moment of longing for union before the beloved and his loved one must be fully mourned and separated between life and death.

Art and psychoanalysis: sublimation and disguise Titians early work, exemplified in the Noli Me Tangere, represents his efforts both to sublimate his instinctual sexual and aggressive energy into his art, and to manage the anxiety brought about by unconscious issues related to the Oedipal complex, and the loss of his mentor. Classical Freudian theory can uncover these unconscious issues by exploring the process of sublimation and dream-work as two sides of the psychoanalytic interpretation of art. Freud (1923b) related the creative act to the work of sublimation, which provides a substitute object and aim for instinctual sexual and aggressive energy. Ernst Kris (1952) builds on Freuds theory of sublimation in his Psychoanalysis and Art. Kris sees art as a process in which the ego creatively manages and potentially transforms instinctual material. He claims that sublimation in creative activity has two features: the discharge of instinctual energy and the shift in psychic levels (p. 25). The discharge of instinctual energy refers first to the displacement of energy from unacceptable to socially acceptable paths, and second to a transformation or neutralization of that energy. The shift in psychic levels refers to the possibility of moving material from unconscious to preconscious, or from preconscious thought to external representation. In other words, managing or even possibly

Pastoral Psychol (2011) 60:409420

411

making conscious otherwise latent instinctive wishes or drives. The expression of unconscious or preconscious material in art is due to the mediating function of the ego, able to exert control over the expression of primary process. According to Kris, such creative work solves an inner contest, sometimes as a compromise between conflicting forces, sometimes as a defense against one particularly dangerous instinct (p. 302). Thus for the artist, creative work can offer an opportunity to reorganize unconscious issues in the artists psyche, and even presents the possibility to reintegrate psychic material into the mediating functions of the ego. Through artistic creativity the ego is able to reestablish control, threatened by pressing instinctual demands. The possibility for reintegration suggests that this creative process does more than redirect sublimated instinctual energy. Art works out unconscious issues in the artists own psyche by expressing and representing unconscious material, distorted and disguised in the manifest content of a piece of art. The Freudian approach to interpreting art involves a similar analytical method as that used in the interpretation of dreams: exploring symbolic material for how it expresses instinctual drives, especially related to sexuality or aggression. Freud (1935) believed that the manifest content of the dream was a distorted substitute for unconscious material, and this distortion was the work of the egos forces of defense. It is this distorted substitute that makes itself present in works of art. Unconscious wishes are disguised in dreams through the censorship exercised by certain recognized tendencies of the ego, over desires of an offensive character that arise during sleep (p. 131). Much like repression in waking life, these desires are unacceptable to the aesthetic or moral sense of the ego, and so must be censored and disguised before they can enter into conscious life. Freud explains the process of disguising latent unconscious content and how it becomes manifest in dreams. The ego censors unconscious material by distorting it through the processes of condensation, displacement, and plastic-word representation (image). In condensation, only a fragment of the latent dream thought passes over into the manifest dream. A portion of a dream element stands as a substitute for a much larger unconscious whole. Latent unconscious elements sharing some common characteristics are also put together and blended into a single whole. In displacement, a latent element may be replaced by something more remote, such as an allusion. The emphasis can be transferred from an important element to unimportant elements, or allusions in the manifest dream can appear to be only superficially or remotely connected to their latent content. The third is the transformation of unconscious wishes or thoughts into visual images, or what Freud called word-representations. Dream elements become a kind of pictorial alphabet, where complex concepts are oversimplified into images. These images are sometimes connected to unconscious thought only phonetically through word-association or by analogy through similar characteristics to the visual image. The disguised content in dreams is further complicated through the use of unconscious corporate symbols. Freud claims: The dreamer has at his command a symbolic mode of expression of which he knows nothing, and does not even recognize, in his waking life (p. 147). Symbols are ready-made through the dreamers unconscious participation in the wider culture, rather than a distortion brought about by individual acts of dream-censorship. They are related to an unconscious store derived from popular sayings and songs, myths and fairy tales, colloquial speech or fantasy. For Freud, many of these symbols relate to the sexual instinct (p. 150). Applying the concepts of dream analysis to works of art leads the interpreter to look beyond the manifest content of the artwork to search out disguised or symbolic evidence of the artists unconscious material. For instance, a figure or image may be a substitution for a larger unconscious issue or an allusion to unconscious content. A symbol may express sexual or aggressive dream-wishes, or an insignificant detail may

412

Pastoral Psychol (2011) 60:409420

be heavy with unconscious meaning. The interpreter utilizes this analysis to find connections between the artists life and the work of art. Titians early artistic history: finding and losing the father In 1497, at the age of nine, Titian came down from his mountain home in Cadore to begin his apprenticeship in Venice, first with a Sebastiano Zuccati in the trade-art of mosaic and then with the most famous painters of the time, the Bellini brothers. The more conservative Gentile Bellini remained on the edge of the new humanism: careful in his forms and famous for his large paintings that evoked gatherings of Venetians. His use of depth was contrasted by the monumental weight and formalism of his figures. His brother Giovanni was at the height of experimentation in the new style of oils. He had a greater balance in his depthperception and was more fluid and natural in his human figures. Titian was frustrated under the tutelage of Gentile by his careful procedures of painting and his statuesque style. It is thought that Gentile was equally displeased with Titian, claiming he was too rushed and free in his preparatory drawings. Titian finally left his apprenticeship with Gentile Bellini, moving briefly to Giovanni before attaching his own prospects to the meteoric rise of the young Giorgione (Rosand 1978). Titian did not find a father-figure in the Bellinis, but appears to have become infatuated with the talented and engaging Giorgione of Castelfranco, barely 10 years his senior. According to the 16th century art historian Vasari (1996/1568) Giorgione surpassed the Bellinis and every other master of his day. His technique combined naturalism with romantic idyllic scenes: he made certain living forms and other things so soft, so well harmonized, and so well blended in the shadows, that many of the excellent masters of this time were forced to confess that he had been born to infuse spirit into figures and counterfeit the freshness of living flesh better than any other painter (p. 641). In his thirties, Giorgione was already a famous painter, and the first in line to take over the Bellinis position as first painter of Venice. According to Vasari, at about 18 years of age Titian abandoned the Bellinis and attached himself to that of Giorgione, coming in a short time to imitate his works so well that his pictures at times were mistaken for works by his practice and judgment (p. 782). Titian, like many others in Venice, fell deeply under Giorgiones spell. A new freedom of artistic expression was opened to him. He had been fighting against Gentile Bellinis carefully planned, dry and precise style. He was now inspired to take on Giorgiones intuitive style of painting. He had learned to begin each painting with a series of carefully detailed preliminary studies. Now he copied Giorgione, who sketched out his compositions in color directly on his canvas (Williams 1968). Titians early work reflects the impressionistic style, pastoral mood and rich colors of his mentor. Yet this relationship was not without ambivalence from the beginning. Giorgione was given the prestigious commission to paint the faade for the Fondaco de Tedeschi: the center of trade and social life for German merchants in Venice. Allegedly, Giorgione hired Titian in 1507 to be an assistant on this project. This was Titians first move away from the Bellinis and into his own as Giorgiones assistant. Yet according to Vasari, Giorgione was made jealous of Titian when Titians work, a painting of Judith with the head of Holfernes, was mistaken for Giorgiones own. Men complemented Giorgione for his younger assistants work, calling it his best. Other contemporary art historians claim that there was no break in their relationship, and rumors of Giorgiones extreme reactions to his jealousyincluding locking himself away for days and ending all friendship with Titianwere

Pastoral Psychol (2011) 60:409420

413

false (Williams 1968). Indeed, the master and assistant seemed to have remained connected in Giorgiones studio, since Titian would go on to complete many of Giorgiones works after his death. Vasari even admits that when Giorgione died, Titian was the disciple to replace the master, who not only equaled him but surpassed him greatly (p. 645). After too few intense years of painting alongside his mentor, Giorgione died suddenly of the plague in 1510. That same year, Titian finished Giorgiones Dresden Venus, adding a cupid and part or possibly all the building scene behind the reclining nude figure. He then left Venice for Padua in December, returning in 1512 to claim his place as Giorgiones successor: the first in line to take over Giovanni Bellinis place as first painter of Venice. By 1513, Titians prestige began to match his aspirations. He applied to the Venetian Council of Ten, asking to be appointed supervisor of the decorations of the Great Council Hall, and to be promised the position of first painter at Giovanni Bellinis death. Yet within a year in 1514, the Council of Ten suddenly reversed its initial acceptance and ruled against Titian. It was not until 1515 that the Council agreed to confer the commission on Titian after Bellinis death. He was awarded this in 1517 (Williams 1968, p. 63). Thus the years between 1510 and 1517 were years of transition and anxiety for Titian, as he moved to take the place of his mentor. He had lost his mentor and yet gained from his death. Yet he must still prove himself to be the successor worthy of his mentor s power. Titians early art: succession and repetition Titian was evidently still connected to his dead mentor, since at his return to Venice in 1512 patrons were still eager to acquire paintings from Giorgione, and saw Titian as his successor. Titian began completing Giorgiones unfinished works, but also began to develop his own style in independent commissions. For the next few years he was a painter in transition: both Giorgiones successor in his perfect imitation of the dead master s style, and in Titians new commissions where his thicker brushwork and more voluptuous humanism received praise. There is no documentation on how Titian mourned the loss of his mentor. However, Titians early painting remained so closely representative of Giorgiones that the authorship of the whole or part of several paintings remains in controversy. Titian also repeated themes and figures in his work through the decade after Giorgiones death that are connected to the year of 1510. Perhaps the most famous and obvious repetition is the reclining nude in the Dresden Venus which appears in the same form and shape, and yet transformed from the warm ideal of Giorgione to humanistic and voluptuous intensity 26 years later, in Titians Venus of Urbino (1536). Yet perhaps the more profound and seemingly unimportant element is the multiple repetitions of the landscape from the back of the Dresden Venus that Titian completed the year Giorgione died. The repetition of the landscape from the Dresden Venus connects the conclusion of his mentor s work in 1510 with the Noli Me Tangere Titian paints in 151214. The buildings at the right, a village and castle arising from Marys side of the painting, are an almost exact repetition of those in the background of Giorgiones Dresden Venus (Wethey 1969). The buildings are then found in reverse on Sacred and Profane Love (15131514). The front building and the ruin can be seen partially in The Three Ages in the Palazzo Doria also completed in this time, which follow the Noli Me Tangeres themes of an almost naked man and a dressed but loose-sleeved woman. Finally, according to George Martin Richter (1933) in his article Landscape Motifs in Giorgiones Venus, the same group of houses appears

414

Pastoral Psychol (2011) 60:409420

again in the Cupid in the Academy in Vienna, and in the Cupid in a private collection in Italy, both ascribed to Titian (p. 218). There is some debate on whether or not Giorgione himself had originally painted some or all of the buildings behind the Dresden Venus, or whether Titian added the whole scene himself after his master s death. There are some differences in the two landscapes. According to Richter (1933), compared to the Noli Me Tangere the building in Giorgiones Dresden Venus makes a flat impression, suggesting that Titian completed some but not all of the landscape. The Noli Me Tangere has a deeper variant of light and shade, and the roofs are more carefully drawn. There are also some additions to Titians later work: In the Noli Me Tangere, a broad well-designed road leads to the big building with the gateway. A man with a dog is seen descending this road. In the Dresden Venus the man and the dog are missing and the road is depicted in a very sketchy and indistinct manner. Before the gateway in the Noli Me Tangere there is a little ruin with another similar gateway. Of this little building only very slight traces are to be seen in the Dresden Venus. (Richter 1933, p. 217) Richter further says that it is a curious and most important fact that this little ruin appears again in the so-called Sacred and Profane Love (p. 217). Thus, at the time when Titian was about to take his place as his mentors successor we find the buildingsprobably begun in his dead mentors handrepeated in Titians later work. In the Noli Me Tangere, we find the addition of the man with his dog, the stronger lines of the road, and the clear representation of the ruin that is only hinted at in the Dresden Venus, now blocking the way to the buildings drafted by Giorgione and finished by Titian in the year of Giorgiones death. Finally, the element of a single treefor Freud (1935) a dream-symbol of the phallusstanding alone directly behind the figures and framing their action, can be seen in Titians first commission in Padua that he took the year of his mentors death. The commission was to paint the miracles of St. Anthony. The tree stands behind the figures, in a work suggestively called The Healing of Wrathful Son. This element of the single tree in the immediate background repeats itself in the Noli Me Tangere. If it seems that Titian may have been simply copying past paintings for conveniences sake, it is important to note that the Noli Me Tangere painting itself was significantly changed somewhere in the middle of its composition. It actually began with a more conventional medieval pose. Jesus was depicted as walking away from the Magdalene instead of moving towards her. He appeared to have a gardener s hat, to better represent the Gospel story. The background was also different in the original. X-rays reveal that the first background consisted of a high ridge crowned with buildings and extending from the left to a point beyond the centre of the picture, thereby occupying more space than the existing ridge on the right. In the centre, behind Christs head, there was a tree growing on the plain below the ridge. This was much smaller than the existing treethe top of its foliage was little higher than the top of the tallest buildings on the ridgeand inclined in the opposite direction. (Gould 1958, p. 44) Thus not only was Jesus turned away, but the buildings had been sketched on Jesus side, rather than Marys. The ridge and its buildings extended beyond the center of the painting, anchoring the picture. Titian completely reworked this composition, replacing the original buildings on the left with the landscape repetition from the Dresden Venus on the right. The repetition of the

Pastoral Psychol (2011) 60:409420

415

Padua tree image is a further revision to the original composition. The tree had once been much smaller, and moved at the angle with Jesus, not with Marys body. In the new version, the tree anchors and overshadows the action. Its phallic reach mimics Marys own desire to touch Jesus phallus. While the garden hoe blocks the space between them, Jesus is not moving away but towards Mary. The bodies are turned to each other, creating the tension and desire between Mary and Jesus, and making their two forms the central shape in the composition. Thus Titian changed his mind mid-composition, and took the time to create a completely new message through this painting. The change in the central figures expresses the ambivalence of their reunion, emphasizing tension and desire. The change in the buildings and their close connection to the first painting made after Giorgiones death suggest displaced unconscious material related to the background of the scene. Marys side holds the buildingsincluding the ruin, the lane and the dogwhile Jesus background opens onto sky and distance. Psychoanalysis and the artist: Titians history and its creative expression If Kris is correct in his understanding of the creative process, Titian was reworking a pressing unconscious issue, and sublimating his powerful instinctual drives through this new creative expression. The talented Titian tied his rising star to his young mentor s huge success. The sudden death of his mentor left Titian with a great loss and a great opportunity. Titians Noli Me Tangere suggests the instinctual tensions Titian experienced with his dead mentor: his ambivalent feelings of love and competition for Giorgione as an Oedipal fatherfigure, his anxiety as he prepares to take his master s place, and his continued mourning for his mentor colored by his own maneuvering to put forward his name as the next leading painter of Venice. The Oedipal conflict best explains Titians ambivalence for his lost Giorgione in both his love for him and his desire to compete and overcome him. The two primary instincts of the unconscious, the erotic instinct and the death instinct, can be traced to the earliest stages of development especially in the ambivalent feelings towards the father in the Oedipal stage. Freud (1923a) summarizes this stage in his Ego and Id: The boys sexual wishes in regard to his mother become more intense and his father is perceived as an obstacle to them; from this the Oedipus complex originates. His identification with his father then takes on a hostile colouring and changes into a wish to get rid of his father in order to take his place with his mother. Henceforward his relation to his father is ambivalent; it seems as if the ambivalence inherent in the identification from the beginning had become manifest. (p. 22) For Freud, this ambivalence is characteristic of the sexual and aggressive instincts. Freud found that these two polar opposites are actually closely connected: love is accompanied often by hate, hate is often the forerunner of love, and the two appear to change into their opposite over time (p. 33). In the Oedipal conflict, the boy struggles between a love for the father leading to identification, and a hate for the father leading to a desire to vanquish and replace him. For Freud, instinctive Oedipal wishes are also connected to displaced anxiety, which he relates to the father and to the castration anxiety inherent in the Oedipal phase. In The Problem of Anxiety Freud (1936) claims that anxiety over an imagined danger is a substitution for anxiety related to primary instincts. He connects two cases of infantile zoophobiaLittle Hans and his fear of being bitten by a horse, and the Russian boys fear

416

Pastoral Psychol (2011) 60:409420

of being eaten by a wolfto an ambivalent relationship with the father. The fear of being bitten by a horse or eaten by a wolf becomes a substitute for the fear of being castrated by the father. Both cases to varying degrees express a sadistic aggression against the father and a tender, passive attitude towards the father s male superiority. This desire to triumph over and yet find a tender feminine connection to the father is part of the complicated transition through the Oedipal stage. While the two cases of zoophobia develop very differently, Freud sees a similar motive force behind the repression and its displaced anxiety, related to this sense of competition with the father: in these, we have seen, the ego must intervene against a libidinal object-cathexis of the id (that of the positive or negative Oedipus complex, namely), because of the recognition that to yield to it would entail the danger of castration (p. 59). Titians sexual and aggressive feelings related to his dead mentor are sublimated into his intense ambition to become, at a very early age, the first painter of Venice: a position Giorgione surely would have taken as he was famed to surpass all the masters of his day. Through his early bid for power, Titian redirects his anxiety from his ambivalent love for Giorgione to his petition and subsequent politicking to be accepted by the Council. However, Titian makes a risky gamble in petitioning the Council of Ten, and their acceptance and then rejection comes as a kind of castration to the young artist as he asserts his place as successor to the father. Titians early bid for first painter in 1513 and its reversal in 1514 suggests that Titian was under a great amount of castration anxiety as he sought to make a name for himself and replace his father-figure and mentor as the star of the Venetian Renaissance. Ernst Kris (1952) emphasizes the connection between the drive to create and issues with the father related to the Oedipal stage: the fantasiesI can speak only of menare centered around the father and around the conflict between active and passive tendencies (p. 301). In the unconscious, gods, artists, and fathers can be also interchangeable images. They are related to power, control and creativity (Adams 1993). Thus, in the Noli Me Tangere Jesus is condensed into a symbol of Titians lost father-figure and mentor, and a symbol of the phallic power he wishes to gain in taking his mentor s place. Kris goes on to suggest that the creative process itself is a process where passivity is extreme, related to homosexual tendencies. Thus Mary represents Titians passive desire for his mentor, and the desire to be filled with his creative power. Mary takes a lower position while Jesus stands. Their bodies curve towards each other. She reaches for his phallus in supplication and desire while he blocks her reach by holding onto his own loins. The circle of tension the forms create in the painting are related to the ambivalence of sexual love and prohibition, creative power and desire for power, as both figures reach for and are blocked from each other. The Noli Me Tangere offers Titian an opportunity to express his Oedipal competition and anxiety, manifested in the multiplicity of phallic images from the tree, to the garden hoe, to the linens emphasizing Jesus loins. Titians unconscious desire for conquest is represented in the phallic tree that asserts itself towards his mentor in the same angle as Marys own longing reach. The tree, repainted from its original smaller version that followed Jesus angle, now overshadows the figures and is the largest single element in the painting. It repeats the phallic tree in Titians first commission in Padua, also related to creative and godlike phallic power in the healing of the wrathful son. Jesus holds the other symbol of the phallusthe garden hoeand uses it to block Mary from touching his loins. The three symbols together make an allusion to the number three. As Freud (1935) claims, the sacred number three is symbolic of the whole male genitalia (p. 137).

Pastoral Psychol (2011) 60:409420

417

Jesus near nakedness, emphasizing his loins, also suggests that Titian desires the creative power of his mentor. The translucent loincloth and the folds of fabric Jesus gathers to prevent Mary from touching his loins accentuate them by disguising them. The focus on the loins suggests his mentor s godlike phallic power: the power to create. According to Leo Steinberg (1983) in The Sexuality of Christ, this symbol of Christs manhood would have been understood as a symbol of Incarnation and power. Steinberg explores the phallus theme in images of the Madonna and Child, Man of Sorrows, Crucifixion, Deposition and Pieta in the Renaissance. These range from erection visible through the loincloth, to fabulous folds and phallic streams of material around the loins, to the positioning of Christs hands across the phallus. In this focus on the phallus, the Renaissance was responding to a corporate symbol of power, related to dreams. The phallus erect in folds of cloth, touched by others, touched by himself, constitute what Steinberg calls the conceit of the phallus as a manifestation of power, adding: In an ancient text well known to 16thcentury authors, the Oneirocritica, or Interpretation of Dreams, the penis is a symbol of strength and physical vigor (p. 89). Steinberg reminds us that the 16th century had its own corporate representation of this symbol in the codpiece. These repetitions suggest that Titian is using a larger dream-symbol to struggle with his own unconscious issues of phallic power, sexual longing for his mentor, and Oedipal competition. The layers of phallic imagery combined with the tension and ambivalence in the forms suggest that Titian longs to take power from his mentor, yet he also longs sexually for his mentor, incarnate before him. Why represent this sexual and aggressive desire in the resurrected Christ, instead of one of the equally suggestive scenes from Jesus life: the sinful woman washing his feet, the Wedding of Cana, or the dance of Salome? Why not other images of overcoming the phallus or dealing with castration anxiety such as the image of Judith that Titian paints for the Fondaco de Tedeschi? That particular image of defeated phallic power is the one that suggestively becomes a source of tension between assistant and mentor, when contemporaries think it is Giorgiones work instead of the younger Titians. Yet the resurrection of Christ condenses both a symbol of power and a longing for the dead to return. Returning to dream-work, we find that Freud (1935) relates particular dreams of rising from the dead to the experience of mourning and loss: When a man has lost someone dear to him, for a considerable period afterwards he produces a special type of dream, in which the most remarkable compromises are effected between his knowledge that that person is dead and his desire to call him back to life. Sometimes the deceased is dreamt of as being dead, and yet still alive because he does not know that he is dead, as if he would only really die if he did know it; at other times he is half dead and half alive, and each of these conditions has its distinguishing marks. We must not call these dreams nonsensical, for to come to life again is no more inadmissible in dreams than it is in fairy-tales, in which it is a quite common fate. (p. 166) The resurrection thus represents, not a return, but a loss. The image of the resurrected Jesus is an unconscious compromise: he is present in the flesh but he cannot be touched. He is himself and yet disguised and mistaken as the gardener, blocked by the garden hoe. The symbol of the resurrected yet untouchable Jesus is an allusion to the energy still cathected to his mentor, as Titian continues the process of mourning even as he seeks the power of Giorgiones phallic creativity. The theme of loss and separation represented in the wished for resurrection of his mentor lead us to the work of mourning outlined in Freuds (1917) Mourning and Melancholia.

418

Pastoral Psychol (2011) 60:409420

In mourning, reality testing forces one to recognize the loved object no longer exists, and requires a slow removal of libido from the lost object. We can assume that Titian fit into Freuds definition of mourning rather than melancholia, because Titian has enough reality testing to take up the commission in Padua in the year of Giorgiones death, and directs his object desire outward in positioning himself to become Venices next great public artist.2 Yet Titian must still unconsciously process the loss of his mentor, even as he consciously appears to be taking his place. Freud explains that this struggle arises in all mourning, for man never willingly abandons a libido-position, not even when a substitute is already beckoning to him (p. 166). According to Freud, each one of the memories and hopes that bind the libido to this object has to be brought up and hyper-cathected, and the detachment of the libido from it accomplished (p. 166). Only when the work of mourning is completed can the ego become free and uninhibited again. Thus Titian must move forward to his new objecthis own famewhile still slowly removing the libido connected to his mentor. Through the painting Titian works out his dream-wish that Giorgione is resurrected from the dead. Like Mary he wishes to cling to his own savior in the mentor Giorgione. But he can only wish for, not touch, his mentor again. He must grieve the permanent line that separates life from death, successor from father-figure. A manifest dream image can combine different themes of unconscious material that have visual or verbal similarity. Titian desires Giorgione alive again. But Titian also desires to replace his lost object. Giorgione is no more and Titian reaches to be resurrected in his place. Thus Jesus is both Giorgione, and all Titian wants to be: the longed for transformation of Titian into the godlike state of creative power. In his loss, Titian wants his mentor back. But in his loss, Titian also wants to completely replace and become his mentor. The resurrection he finally desires is his own. Freud (1923a) explains this response as a part of mourning a lost object: the ego assumes the features of the object, trying to make good the ids loss by saying: Look, you can love me tooI am so like the object (p. 20). This replacement of assistant to mentor is noticeable in the many paintings of Titians early years that repeat Giorgiones style, as well as the repetition of Giorgiones themes and figures in Titians painting. The Noli Me Tangere was one of many paintings often taken as a Giorgione painting, showing the extent to which Titian appropriated his mentor in order to become his mentor. Repetition leads us back to the landscape of Titians painting. Our analysis thus far has emphasized the foreground. But just as dream-work often displaces the emphasis in a dream to disguise unconscious material, so the background of Titians early paintings seem to send a veiled message to the viewer. This background was repainted in the Noli Me Tangere to follow the background in Giorgiones Dresden Venus. Marys side of the painting now holds the buildingsincluding the ruin, the clear lane, and the man with the dog. Jesus background opens onto sky and distance. This change to the background suggests that Titian intuits his continued struggle with guilt over taking his mentor s place and yet also his sense of reality testing in his mourning. Titian and Giorgione are bound for different places. His mentor is bound for eternity: to disappear into the empty space behind him. Titian is bound for the road to the buildings, to civilization and to reality. The road, sketched in Titians completion of Giorgiones Dresden Venus, is now a wellformed road, with a man and a dog representing faithfulness. The buildings are sturdier

2 According to Freud (1917) melancholia develops through the narcissistic object choice: the free libido is withdrawn into the ego and not directed to another object. Thus, some features of melancholy are derived from real grief and others from the process of regression from narcissistic object-choice to narcissism (p. 170).

Pastoral Psychol (2011) 60:409420

419

and better painted, representing Titians return to Venice and to his role with the real and the living. The latent content of the buildings and the ruin remain a mystery. We cannot complete a dream-analysis through Titians own verbal free-association, but we may be able to see Titians own associations to this building element through its visual repetitions. Similar buildings repeat themselves in two versions of the Cupid, mentioned by Richter above. There are also two allegorical paintings with similar buildings in the landscape. The early painting, The Three Ages of Man, was another painting mistaken for Giorgiones. In it, the life-cycle is represented in allegorical terms: each age connected by being represented one step further back in the same landscape. In the foreground is a sexualized, almost naked young man with a loin-cloth, being seduced by a loose-sleeved young woman with a flute. In the middle center, babies are being watched over by a cherub, leaning on the long stump of a severed tree. In the rear an old man gazes at two skulls. In the background looms a building reminiscent of the front building in the Dresden Venus. Thus the themes of a naked man and loosely dressed woman, phallic symbols, and distant buildings are repeated. In Sacred and Profane Love the subject matter is unclear and the painting has changed names over the centuries. Two women are presented in the foreground on opposite sides of a marble pool of water, with a cupid dipping his hand in the pool. Behind the idealized naked woman, the background is sky and what appears to be a church spire. Behind the fully dressed woman are trees and a close rendition of the Dresden Venus background. It is not clear if this is Venus giving her approval to a bride, or if the two women represent two kinds of earthly love. However, both The Three Ages of Man and Sacred and Profane Love seem to be alluding to life-cycle points and, with the Cupids, all express themes of love and eroticism. Perhaps the presence of these buildings in the background represent eroticism and love tied to life-cycle issues of home and belonging: the layers of unconscious struggle Titian faces as he establishes his adult life without his mentor. Titian did leave his own home at 9 years of age. When he became successful, he bought a house from which he could see the mountains of his old childhood home in Cadore, and stayed there his whole life. Dreamwork teaches us to find unconscious elements in allusions and hints, deemphasized details rather than central storylines. If Freud (1935) is right in suggesting that houses are symbols of the feminine, the theme of buildings in the back of Titians paintings suggest a deep longing for that sense of feminine home and belonging. The ruin represents how Titian lost his sense of home and belonging at Giorgiones death: a loss that must have repeated much older losses when he left his family and childhood home as a young boy. As an adult in a culture of phallic power, Titian sought this sense of erotic and loving belonging through replacing the father. But perhaps a deeper latent issue was the loss of his home, and the desire for a sense of feminine belonging. A loss that Mary herself protests against as she reaches to touch Jesus. In the Noli Me Tangere, the ruin must now be crossed before entering the buildings, connecting the original Giorgione buildings with Marys own loss and longing.

Conclusion The Gospel theme is still the Gospel theme, but dream-work teaches the interpreter that larger unconscious symbols in common culture become particularized through the individual experience of the dreamer. Titian was in a stage of mourning and loss, and we can see how his ambivalent Oedipal feelings towards his master required him to sublimate

420

Pastoral Psychol (2011) 60:409420

his emotions into his ambition to become first painter, and to manage them in the themes he expresses in his art. The loss of his mentor and his own anxiety is worked out repetitively, exemplified by the exactness of his appropriation of Giorgiones style, and the repetition of his themes in Titians early work. There could be no Gospel story to represent that ambivalence better than this most ambivalent Gospel scene in the scriptures, when Jesus is risen and yet untouchable, comforting and yet denying the beloved Marys reach.

References
Adams, L. S. (1993). Art and psychoanalysis. New York: Harper Collins Publishers. Freud, S. (1917). Mourning and melancholia. In P. Rieff (Ed.), General psychological theory: Papers on metapsychology (pp. 164179). New York: Collier Books, 1963. Freud, S. (1923a). The ego and the id. J. Riviere (Trans.). In J. Strachey (Ed.), New York: W.W. Norton, 1962. Freud, S. (1923b). The libido theory. In P. Rieff (Ed.), General psychological theory: Papers on metapsychology (pp. 180184). New York: Collier Books, 1963. Freud, S. (1935). Dreams. J. Riviere (Trans.). A general introduction to psycho-analysis. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation. Freud, S. (1936). The problem of anxiety. H. A. Bunker (Trans.). New York: W.W. Norton. Gould, C. (1958). Titian restored. The Burlington magazine for connoisseurs, 100. <http://www.jstor.org/ stable/872305> Accessed: 4/13//2010. Katsanis, B. D. (2007). Meeting in the garden: Intertextuality with the Song of Songs in Holbeins Noli me tangere. Interpretation, 61(4). <http://search.ebscohost.comATLA0001619800&site=ehost-live> Accessed: 4/13/2010. Kris, E. (1952). Psychoanalytic explorations in art. New York: International Universities Press. Richter, G. M. (1933). Landscape motifs in Giorgiones Venus. The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, 63, November issue. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/865610> Accessed: 4/13/2010. Rosand, D. (1978). Titian. New York: Harry N. Abrams. Steinberg, L. (1983). The sexuality of Christ in renaissance art and in modern oblivion (2nd ed.). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Vasari, G. (1996). Lives of the painters, sculptors and architects, vol. 2. G. du C. de Vere (Trans.). New York: Knopf. Wethey, H. (1969). The paintings of Titian: The religious paintings, vol. 1. London: Phaidon. Williams, J. (1968). The world of Titian. New York: Time-Life Books.

Copyright of Pastoral Psychology is the property of Springer Science & Business Media B.V. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.