Giorgione (1477–1510)

Venetian painter of the High Renaissance, known as a master for the handful of his paintings that have survived. Born as Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco in the small town of Castelfranco Veneto, he apprenticed in the workshop of Giovanni Bellini, who was at that time one of the most respected painters in Venice. His talent was recognized from an early age; he was commissioned to paint a portrait of Doge Agostino Barberigo and, in 1504, an altarpiece commemorating Matteo Constanzo for a church in Castelfranco. He also worked on frescoes for the walls of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, the Hall of German Merchants that served as a warehouse. These frescoes were painted in collaboration with Titian, another major Venetian painter, but were later destroyed. Giorgione specialized in paintings commissioned from private individuals, with whom he had a much greater range of possible subject matter and style than he would have in works commissioned by the church or public officials. Historians have disagreed on works attributed to Giorgione, with only about six definitely by his hand. Only one of his paintings, a portrait entitled Laura, was signed. Others include the Three Philosophers, Portrait of a Young Man, the Pastoral Concert, and Sleeping Venus, in which a nude figure is placed in a natural background, and which directly inspired the Venus of Urbino of Titian. The most famous Giorgione painting, The Tempest, is a startling landscape that shows a seated woman, who is breast-feeding an infant, near the figure of a standing soldier. In the background a storm approaches over the ruins of a city. The Tempest challenges the viewer to decipher the meaning of the figures, the storm, and other symbols, which originate completely in the artist's imagination.

In this and other works Giorgione was the first to place figures in a landscape setting. Possibly under the influence of Leonardo da Vinci, Giorgione also adopted the sfumato technique of soft, shaded contours, a sharp break from the clear lines and brighter colors of early Renaissance paintings. In several of his works, he ignored traditional subjects of the Christian religion or classical mythology, and created personal allegories, set in symbol-rich landscapes that give his works an air of mystery and poetic charm. By the time of his death of the plague at the age of thirty-three, his works had a strong influence on many Venetian painters, including Bellini and Titian, and Venetian painting of the next two centuries, notably in the Baroque works of Palma Vecchio and Dosso Dossi, who borrowed many of the techniques that Giorgione pioneered.

See Also: painting; Titian; Venice