Andrea Previtali, 'Scenes from Tebaldeo's Eclogues: The Story of Damon', about 1510

These four small pictures were probably painted for a piece of furniture, perhaps the case of a musical instrument. The black borders separating the two scenes on each panel appear to be original and must relate to how they were framed. They illustrate the key episodes of the Second Eclogue by Antonio Tebaldeo (1456–1538), a poet from Ferrara.

The four scenes are painted on two wooden panels. Episodes one (Damon Broods on his Unrequited Love for Amaryllis) and three (Damon takes his Life) are painted on one panel and episodes two (Thyrsis asks Damon the Cause of his Sorrow) and four (Thyrsis finds the Body of Damon) are on the other.

In the first scene the shepherd Damon broods over his unrequited love for Amaryllis. He neglects his sheep, stops playing his lyre and rests his head in his hand. In the next scene his friend Thyrsis urges him to stop being so melancholy. In the third scene, having broken his instrument and abandoned it on the ground, Damon plunges a dagger into his chest. In the final scene, Thyrsis discovers Damon’s dead body.

When the paintings were acquired by the National Gallery in 1937 the director, Kenneth Clark, believed them to be by the Venetian painter Giorgione. It was later suggested that they were the work of Previtali although no other known paintings by him depict subjects from humanist texts, or approach the style of Giorgione so closely. However, the scenes resemble other signed works by Previtali and it is now accepted that the paintings are by him. The way the foliage fringes the sky is characteristic of Previtali, as are the ‘half-star’ yellow highlights used to render sunlight on the leaves. The almost vertical hills, used like wings on a stage, are also typical of him. In the background of Previtali’s early signed Virgin and Child (Detroit Institute of Art, Chicago) the shepherd is posed rather like Damon and black sheep appear in the flock as they do here in the third scene.

The comparison with the Detroit painting suggests that our panels were painted early in the first decade of the sixteenth century, in which case they might have been a response to the recent publication of Tebaldeo’s poems. First published in Modena in 1498, the poems were very popular and were reprinted in 1499, in Venice in 1500 and then a further ten times in Venice and four times in Milan between then and 1520. The paintings were probably made some time around 1510.