GIORGIONE

This detail on the east wall depicts musical instruments.

This detail on the east wall depicts the “sphera mundi”.

There are several explanatory scrolls in Latin that punctuate the various sections into which the frieze is divided, in each section pairs of texts flanks ovals containing figures of ancient sages who made specific contributions to the field of knowledge represented in that section.

The present detail shows cartouches and the head of an elderly sage.

This detail on the east wall depicts astrological symbols.

This detail on the east wall depicts symbols of war.

This detail on the east wall depicts symbols of war.

Created by Giorgione at about age 26, this painting is one of the few reliably attributed to the painter. It is marked by exceptional skill in the drawing and use of colour as well as by a youthfully playful approach to the Old Testament legend. Giorgione depicts the courageous widow, who saved her city from Assyrian invaders by decapitating their commander Holofernes, in the guise of an enchanting girl whose true weapon is not her sword but her beauty.

In the 17-18th century the painting was attributed to Raphael, later to Moretto da Brescia. Originally it was probably a panel of an altarpiece.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 17 minutes):

Alessandro Scarlatti: La Giuditta, oratorio, Part I (excerpts)

The altar-piece, called the Castelfranco Madonna, was in all probability commissioned by the Condottiere Tuzio Costanzo in memory of his son Matteo, who died in 1504: the Costanzo coat of arms can be seen on the base of the Virgin’s throne. It can almost certainly be dated to 1505. Although it is not signed, the authorship is made indisputable by Giorgione’s individual technique in laying on delicately shaded coats of paint without any underlying scaffolding from a drawing. The traditional scheme of composition is lightened by the novel use of such elements as the throne and the landscape, which takes up a good portion of the background.

This smallish altarpiece echoes the artistic approach developed by Giovanni Bellini, who was probably one of Giorgione’s teachers. Giorgione softens both the atmosphere surrounding the figures and that in the space before the viewer. This atmospheric veil has a palpable analogy with the methods of Leonardo da Vinci, who was known to have been in Venice in 1500 and it is possible that Giorgione had seen some works by the Florentine genius. Yet the figural proportions and the lacy landscape speak to a fully personal Giorgionesque idiom.

Giorgione’s minute and delicate treatment of the figures, especially in their heads and the proportions between head and body, is in contrast to the more robust conception of a Mantegna or a Raphael. Giorgione’s poetics are further softened by the implied presence of a dense, palpable atmosphere which serves to de-specify the images. One is hard pressed to locate actual lines or silhouettes in his representations, in contrast to his Florentine contemporaries, who are more dependent upon drawing.

The attribution to Giorgione is doubtful, it is also attributed to Titian.

This is one of the earliest work by Giorgione. The subject was taken from the Jewish Antiquities by Josephus (2. 9:7) Moses was adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter. One day at court Pharaoh jokingly placed his crown on the head of infant Moses who immediately threw it to the ground and trampled on it. This was taken as an omen by the courtiers that Moses would overthrow Pharaoh. To test him, two dishes were brought, one containing lie coal and the other cherries. Moses, guided by an angel, chose the coals and put them in his mouth which was burned. He was thereby proved innocent of any treasonable intent.

This fragment is from the principal fa�ade of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice.

On the principal fa�ade, the decorative scheme was strictly determined by the architectural structure. The frescoes representing various figures were distributed over the spaces between the double windows. The Nude was the sole surviving fresco, located between the fifth and sixth window from the left on the top floor, just below the cornice. It was removed in 1938 and exhibited in the Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice. In 1977-78 it was restored.

The presentation of reality by means of a luminous medium which decants the subtlest gradations of colour with extraordinary fidelity and assembles them with immediacy into images of lyrical purity is a feature also of the extremely rare portraits by Giorgione, amongst them this painting of the Old Woman. As with other pictures attributed with certainty to Giorgione hidden meanings have been searched for in the painting though the writing on the scroll - ‘col tempo’ (with time) - would seem to suggest that its subject is the fading of beauty over the years. Despite the damage suffered by the painting, it is still possible to admire the freedom of touch, the mellow transparency of the medium with which the half figure of the woman is realized and the extraordinary realism with which her lost beauty is explored. The description of the shriveled flesh, the aged eyelids, the toothless mouth, retains nothing at all of the Nordic prototypes and uses colour alone to create an objectively naturalistic image with consummate skill.

The house in Castelfranco, located near the Duomo, once belonged to the Marta family, dates back to the fifteenth century, but was frequently renovated and expanded. The frieze in the hall, long attributed to Giorgione, extends more than thirty meters along the upper portion of the east and west walls of the main room in the house. It is painted in yellow earth chiaroscuro. The subject of the frieze is traditionally believed to centre on the presentation of the liberal and mechanical arts.

The attribution to Giorgione is debated. It is probable that Giorgione only initiated the work, painting the east wall portion of the frieze, and the commission was subsequently brought to completion by an other painter from the school of Treviso.

This work is one of the mysteries of European painting: in spite of its undeniable quality and epochal importance, opinions are divergent concerning both its creator and its theme. It is the outstanding masterpiece of the Venetian Renaissance, the summit of Giorgione’s creative career, so much so that according to some it may have been painted, or at least finished, by Titian rather than Giorgione.

The painting has been interpreted as an allegory of Nature, similar to Giorgione’s Storm, which was undeniably painted by him; it was even viewed as the first example of the modern herdsman genre. Its message must be more complex than this. It is likely that the master consciously unified several themes in this painting, and the deciphering of symbols required a degree of erudition even at the time of its creation. During the eighteenth century the painting was known by the simple name of “Pastorale” and only subsequently was it given the title “Fête champêtre” or “Concert champêtre”, owing to its festive mood. Modern research has pointed out that the composition is in fact an allegory of poetry.

The female figures in the foreground are probably the Muses of poetry, their nakedness reveals their divine being. The standing figure pouring water from a glass jar represents the superior tragic poetry, while the seated one holding a flute is the Muse of the less prestigious comedy or pastoral poetry. The well-dressed youth who is playing a lute is the poet of exalted lyricism, while the bareheaded one is an ordinary lyricist. The painter based this differentiation on Aristotle’s “Poetica”.

The scenery is characterized by a duality. Between the elegant, slim trees on the left, we see a multi-levelled villa, while on the right, in a lush grove, we see a shepherd playing a bagpipe. Yet the effect is completely unified. The very presence of the beautiful, mature Muses provides inspiration; the harmony of scenery and figures, colours and forms proclaims the close interrelationship between man and nature, poetry and music.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 2 minutes):

Francesco da Milano: Tre fantasie for lute

The female figures in the foreground are probably the Muses of poetry, their nakedness reveals their divine being. The standing figure pouring water from a glass jar represents the superior tragic poetry.

This is probably an autograph work from the last years of the artist.

The young knight, with proud expression, holds the magnificent scabbard of his sword with one hand and with the other, points to his helmet, spurs and mace, the pieces of his armour, shown on the parapet in the foreground. Behind him, a squire, depicted in profile, holds the standard pole and is wearing a “bevor”, another important element of a condottiere’s equipment.

The work comes from the imperial collections of Prague Castle and was on show throughout the 18th century in the Belvedere Castle in Vienna, correctly attributed to Giorgione and with the knight identified as Erasmo of Narni (1370-1443), known as Gattamelata, and the squire, as his son, Antonio. The work was brought to Florence following an exchange of paintings between the imperial collections of Vienna and the grand ducal galleries of Florence in the period between 1792 and 1821. The portrait of a knight was then added to the collections in the Uffizi Galleries.

The canvas seems to date back to the earlier part of the 16th century, with the best placement being the intensely experimental period that characterised the beginning of modern painting, boosted by Leonardo’s stay in Venice, in 1500.

In portraiture, as in other areas of painting, the tradition established by Bellini was transformed in the first decade of the sixteenth century by Giorgione. In contrast to the reserved formality of most fifteenth-century portraits, Giorgione introduced a new quality of soulfulness and intimacy into portraiture. He also expanded its expressive range by introducing motifs and compositional devices associated with other types of picture, so that in some cases it becomes difficult to decide whether or not a portrait-like image is meant to represent a real person. His younger contemporaries continued to explore the possibilities that he opened up for portraiture and related images for at least a decade after his death.

The colours of this brilliant portrait are unfortunately faded due to an overcleaning before 1939.

The attribution to Giorgione is debated, some experts think it is the work of Palma Vecchio. The identity of the sitter is also doubtful, he was a Fugger, or perhaps Buffalmaco the painter.

This painting has been altered over the centuries, first transposed into an oval picture and then restored back to a rectangular one. Originally the figure extended below the waist, and there was more space above. The effect was one of much less immediacy for the viewer than is the case today in its cut-down version and was more in keeping with the remoteness of Giorgione’s images as we know them. Like all of Giorgione’s pictures, enigmatic aspects persist; the subject is unspecific, although the artistic intention is the presentation of the surface beauty, the soft flesh juxtaposed against the fur of the luxurious garment, the dark eyes, shining and alert, the thin veil enticingly but gently winding around the exposed breast. The laurel branches, which give their name to the figure, are painted with considerable realism and permit the head to be silhouetted before a neutral gray-green halo of leaves, isolated from the deep-toned background, not unlike Leonardo’s Ginevra de’ Benci. Leonardo’s influence has often been noted in Giorgione’s art, most particularly in the softening of the contours.

This young woman is perhaps a courtesan and a poet, the combination of which is not unknown in Renaissance Venice. Her name is assumed to be Laura because of the depiction of laurel springs behind her. The sensuousness of the representation, the soft flesh of the breast against the fur of her garment, is consistent with the delicacy of treatment in the medium of oil paint, of which Giorgione was an unequaled master.

It is assumed that the sitter probably was also the model of the Tempest.

The painting is dated and signed on the back side. It belonged to the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in Brussels, as shown by the painting of David Teniers (now in the Prado, Madrid).

This beautiful painting is one of the most problematical pictures in the history of art and a constant subject of debate. The identity of the painter is still in question and, while the majority of experts ascribe it to Giorgione, there are a number of scholars who believe it was painted by Giovanni Cariani (an artist much influenced by Giorgione) or by some other Venetian painter active around 1510. Any decision is rendered more difficult by the fact that the painting has come down to us in a very bad condition: the window-opening on the left and the landscape in the background, for example, are so faded that they are scarcely visible to the naked eye. X-ray photographs reveal alterations to both the eyes and the hands, made while the picture was being painted, similar to modifications in other paintings by Giorgione. Certainly there are several features - the extraordinarily fine painterly approach, the intimacy of the expression, the inclusion of the parapet and the window-opening - which support the belief that Portrait of a Man was painted by Giorgione himself, possibly not long before his death in 1510.

The emblems on the parapet - the small hat with a V on it, the female triple head, the tiny tablet and the inscription - have been variously interpreted. One explanation, the most frequent and perhaps the most acceptable, is that this picture is a portrait of the poet Antonio Broccardo.

This painting is probably a copy by Palma Vecchio of Giorgione’s self-portrait in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig.

The still youthful man is wearing his hair shoulder-length. His chin is raised in truculent manner, his mouth energetically shut. We are met by a melancholy gaze emanating from softly shadowed eye-orbits and lightly reddened lids, its intensity stressed by the wrinkles of rage above the root of the nose. While the man’s gaze is challenging, he turns his right shoulder towards us. Intensity and dismissive pride create thus a tense contradiction. Also under tension are the physicality and the illumination. Predominantly dark, the space into which hair, throat and chest disappear almost uncontoured does include a few bright spots, but these are very specific: the emotional focus of the duskily modelled face and, above the transitional beige and green of the garment, a brightly shining piece of metal on the shoulder. This man, then, is wearing martial armour. He is, as we have known since Giorgio Vasari’s mid-16-century artist biographies, none other than the painter of the picture himself.

Giorgio da Castelfranco, known as Giorgione, has a prominent place in the artistic history of Venice, where he worked. Although there is little archive material to tell us much about him personally, he must, like D�rer, be seen as one of the most important innovators on the threshold of the modern age.

With his musically inspired, often mysterious painting, he built a bridge between the older art of the Bellini workshop and that of the young Titian. From Leonardo’s pictures, he had learned a vibrant coloration of the painterly form (sfumato) which he creatively developed, and in addition, he is supposed to have been cultured, with an interest in music and poetry.

The Self-Portrait in Brunswick has been cropped, important parts which illuminate the mystery of the portrait character have been lost. However the original version can be reconstructed thanks to an etching by Wenzel Hollar dating from 1650, when Giorgione’s picture was still entire. Originally, the sitter was holding the severed head of Goliath out in front of him on the balustrade that framed the picture at the bottom, adopted in other words the role of the biblical hero David.

Giorgione’s Self-Portrait as David is the first allegorical artist self-portrait in the history of European art.

Giorgione exploited the new style evolved in Venice through sensual subject matter. The Sleeping Venus is a case in point. The reclining figure was originally accompanied by a small figure of Cupid, but this figure was painted over in 1843.

Giorgione placed the Venus across the whole width of the painting. She stretches one arm behind her head, making a long, continuous slope of body whose gentle curves echo the hills of the landscape behind and suggest some form of connection between the female depicted and nature. Painted at just the moment when Venice was defending its claims on the terra firma, it may, therefore, be possible to read Venus (Venere) as Venice (Venezia).

Venus’s sensuality is heightened by her red lips and by the deep red velvet and white satin drapery upon which her creamy body lies. Significantly, she is asleep, so the issue of decorum is bypassed. Her sleep implies dreaming and transport of the figure to another world. Thus the painting may be interpreted as a poetic evocation of a classical idyll.

Several works of great beauty associated with Giorgione involve the collaboration of another distinctive master. In the Sleeping Venus a significant share has been assumed for Titian, especially in the landscape, where on the right a cupid has been painted out. The outstretched figure, stocky in proportions, is usually considered to be by Giorgione. The drawing is only approximative, with the outlines blurred to produce a gradual transition between the barely modeled flesh and the surrounding surface. But the edges are nonetheless legible, and they form a flattened lozenge-shaped, pale, collage-like form lying close to the picture plane, a device favoured over juxtapositions of darks and lights to conjure up an illusion of three-dimensionality. Giorgione fully exploited the sensuous potential of both the medium and the subject. There is a decidedly erotic air to the totally unselfconscious young woman whose pale flesh is contrasted to the silky cloth.

If compared with Titian’s Venus of Urbino the differences between the two become clear since Titian has taken over the pose and the figural type almost verbatim from Giorgione; they are differences of temperament and personality more than of time passed. If the Sleeping Venus was actually completed by Titian, as is frequently assumed, the overall effect remains tightly connected with Giorgione’s style, and one might also suppose that it falls chronologically near the end of his short career, for we should assume that it was left unfinished at his death.

It was already in 1530 described simply as “the little landscape on canvas with a tempest, a gypsy woman and a soldier…”

This painting, the meaning of which has been greatly debated, marks a moment of capital importance in the renovation of the Venetian style painting, and perhaps is the most representative of the very few genuine surviving works of Giorgione.

The vigour of cultural life at the beginning of the sixteenth century provided exactly the right fertile ground for the personality of Giorgione. With Giovanni Bellini and Vittore Carpaccio as examples in his early training and with his attentive interest in Northern European painting of Belgium he soon decided to attempt a naturalistic language. Colour attains to new all-important powers of expression of the poetic equivalence of man and nature in a single, fearful apprehension of the cosmos. The finest of all expressions of this new vision of the world is the ‘Tempest’, commissioned from the artist by Gabriele Vendramin, one of the leading lights in intellectual circles in the Venice of the day, in whose house the picture was recorded as having been hung by Marcantonio Michiel in 1530.

Though many interpretations of the subject of this small painting have been suggested, none of them is totally convincing. Thus the mystery remains of what exactly the significance is of the fascinating landscape caught at this particular atmospheric moment, the breaking of a storm. Anxious waiting seems to characterize the mood of both the human figures, absorbed in private reveries, and every other detail, from the little town half-hidden behind the luxuriant vegetation and the lazy, tortuous course of the stream to the ancient ruins, the houses, the towers and the buildings in the distance which pale against the blue of the sky. The fascination of the painting arises from the pictorial realization of the illustrative elements. In the vibrant brightness which immediately precedes the breaking of the storm the chromatic values follow one another in fluid gradations achieved by the modulation of the tones in the fused dialectic of light and shadow in an airy perspective of atmospheric value within a definite space. Completely liberated from any subjection to drawing or perspective, colour is the dominant value in a new spacial-atmospheric synthesis which is fundamental to the art of painting in its modern sense.

It was already in 1530 described simply as “the little landscape on canvas with a tempest, a gypsy woman and a soldier…”

This painting, the meaning of which has been greatly debated, marks a moment of capital importance in the renovation of the Venetian style painting, and perhaps is the most representative of the very few genuine surviving works of Giorgione.

The vigour of cultural life at the beginning of the sixteenth century provided exactly the right fertile ground for the personality of Giorgione. With Giovanni Bellini and Vittore Carpaccio as examples in his early training and with his attentive interest in Northern European painting of Belgium he soon decided to attempt a naturalistic language. Colour attains to new all-important powers of expression of the poetic equivalence of man and nature in a single, fearful apprehension of the cosmos. The finest of all expressions of this new vision of the world is the ‘Tempest’, commissioned from the artist by Gabriele Vendramin, one of the leading lights in intellectual circles in the Venice of the day, in whose house the picture was recorded as having been hung by Marcantonio Michiel in 1530.

Though many interpretations of the subject of this small painting have been suggested, none of them is totally convincing. Thus the mystery remains of what exactly the significance is of the fascinating landscape caught at this particular atmospheric moment, the breaking of a storm. Anxious waiting seems to characterize the mood of both the human figures, absorbed in private reveries, and every other detail, from the little town half-hidden behind the luxuriant vegetation and the lazy, tortuous course of the stream to the ancient ruins, the houses, the towers and the buildings in the distance which pale against the blue of the sky. The fascination of the painting arises from the pictorial realization of the illustrative elements. In the vibrant brightness which immediately precedes the breaking of the storm the chromatic values follow one another in fluid gradations achieved by the modulation of the tones in the fused dialectic of light and shadow in an airy perspective of atmospheric value within a definite space. Completely liberated from any subjection to drawing or perspective, colour is the dominant value in a new spacial-atmospheric synthesis which is fundamental to the art of painting in its modern sense.

The Adoration of the Shepherds or the Allendale Nativity, as it is commonly known after one of the previous owners, is now generally accepted as by Giorgione. However, the debate on its attribution continues, with Bellini and the young Titian considered as possible authors. It is assumed by some critics that the landscape was painted by Titian.

This important work had an immediate impact on Venetian painting. The composition is divided into two parts, the dark cave on the right and a luminous Venetian landscape on the left. The shimmering draperies of Joseph and Mary are set off by the darkness behind them, and are also contrasted with the tattered dress of the shepherds. The scene is one of intense meditation; the rustic shepherds are the first to recognize Christ’s divinity and they kneel accordingly. Mary and Joseph also participate in the adoration, creating an atmosphere of intimacy.

This early painting is called the Benson Holy Family since once it belonged to the Robert Henry and Evelyn Holford Benson Collection in London. The figures closely resemble those painted by Giovanni Bellini.

The famous Singers (The Impassioned Singer and its companion-piece, The Singer with Flute) in the Borghese Gallery were attributed to Giorgione. However, this attribution is strongly debated. Some scholars think it to be the work of Domenico Capriolo (1494-1528), others assume that it was executed in the period following the death of Giorgione. The singers sing with an air of Baroque pathos surrounded by strong chiaroscuro effects, which in fact have induced many experts today to date them to the beginning of the 17th century.

Giorgione depicted the celebrated story of Solomon’s wisdom in one of two pendant paintings. The great king has declared that the living child be - literary - divided between the women claiming him. The babe’s mother will cede the child, rather than see him die.

An elusive figure, Giorgione made odd works: here the landscape occupies more than half the panel.

Through the open window the Riva degli Schiavoni and the Campanile (bell tower) of he St Mark’s Basilica can be seen. The campanile is represented with a temporary flat-roofed bell-chamber, which was in place from 1489 to 1511.

The attribution to Giorgione is not universally accepted, some scholars attribute the painting to a painter close to Giorgione.

Very little is known about Giorgione: only a handful of contemporary documents refer to him, and only some six or seven surviving paintings are now considered ‘almost certainly’ by him. Yet he is universally accepted as one of the most influential of Western artists. Probably trained by Giovanni Bellini, he originated a poetic painting of mood, based on colour, light and a new vision of landscape, which we still call ‘Giorgionesque’. Although we attribute to him an altarpiece in his native town of Castelfranco, a ruined nude figure in fresco detached from a building in Venice which he and Titian decorated, and two portraits inscribed with his name in the sixteenth century, he seems to have specialised in small, enigmatic ‘subject’ pictures like this one for private collectors. Whether or not the picture, which was rediscovered, badly damaged, in 1933 in a sixteenth-century villa in Poste Casale, south of Venice, is by Giorgione himself is not very important to us as viewers; it is certainly ‘Giorgionesque’.

The Italian title, Il Tramonto, captures the painting’s special temper better than the English translation, for in Italian the sun sets literally ‘beyond the mountain’. Within a deep landscape meeting the horizon in a startling band of blue, two travellers halt besides a pool, from whose murky waters a little beaked monster emerges.

A hermit inhabits the dark cave on the far side. The mounted Saint George in the middle distance is a restorer’s reconstruction, added in 1934 to cover an area of flaking paint, and to account for what appears, in a photograph of the period, to be the vestigial tail of a dragon. Other reconstructed areas include the larger monster in the water. The modern additions make unsafe any reading of the picture’s intended meaning. If Saint George was originally present, the hermit may be Anthony Abbot a saint distressed with sores, protector against epidemics - of whom it was told that demons in the shape of monsters came at nightfall to ‘tear his body with teeth, with horns, and with claws’. The two men in the foreground may be Saint Roch, a medieval French pilgrim who caught the plague while nursing the sick, and his companion Gothardus tending the ulcer on the saint’s leg. The body of Saint Roch, one of the main protectors against pestilence, is one of Venice’s great relics.

If we compare II Tramonto with, for example, Patenier’s landscape painted a few years later , it is possible to understand the great impact of Giorgione’s work. For all its artificiality, this landscape invites us to enter it in imagination; the construction, in wedge-shaped planes alternately light and dark, stresses continuity from foreground through well-defined intervening space to the blue horizon. The wispy tree in the centre, like the cliff and foliage on either side, pushes back the far from the near. Soft gradations from shadow into light, contours and reflections blurred as if by haze, the isolated and mysterious figures, the barely visible, perhaps imaginary monsters, the alpine town in the distance, combine to create a sense of profound yet indefinable emotion, as ‘Brightness falls from the air…’ Thomas Nashe’s haunting line may be more than visually apt: it comes from a poem entitled ‘In Time of Pestilence’.

The attribution of this painting is strongly debated.

The Three Philosophers must be a work of the last couple of years of Giorgione’s life, since a near-contemporary source says that it was begun by him and finished by Sebastiano del Piombo, a collaboration confirmed by stylistic analysis. The subject matter has long been a source of disagreement. In addition to interpret the painting as three philosophers (or three matematicians) it is also assumed that the painting represents the three Magi, the Holy Family being in the cave at the left.

Whatever the precise theme, one can find three ages of man, three distinct temperaments, and three different nations. There are important pentimenti, more easily accomplished in the oil medium that Giorgione favoured than with tempera. The present picture may have been cut down on all sides, judging from a later copy. If there was an element of collaboration, the invention and the figure types, their poses, and the relation of one to another are Giorgione’s. Sebastiano’s role must have been limited literally to finishing the work, that is, giving it the final surface and unifying the elements. In the Three Philosophers the figures are rather weightless, silent images, placed somewhat unspecifically in space, haphazardly related, as it were, to the landscape. For example, the youngest figure, seated toward the centre of the composition, is partly blocked out by the oriental with the deep red garment, and his head, in profile, is apparently unrelated to the twin tree trunks behind it. The natural and private world Giorgione has created envelops us with its mystery and poetry, with its antiscientific structure and even its rather unclassical choice of figural types and poses.

The painting belonged to the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in Brussels, as shown by the painting of David Teniers (now in the Prado, Madrid). Teniers also painted a strongly modified copy of this painting (now in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin).

The innovations of Giovanni Bellini, in whose work the landscape became visual testimony to the grandeur of the world God created, were being skillfully developed in the early works of his pupil Giorgione. Chromatically more resonant and enriched by contrasts of light and shade, this landscape sets the tone and gives the Christian subject a new, sensual-poetic content.