Giorgione [Zorzi da Castelfranco] Biography

Giorgione [Zorzi da Castelfranco]

(Castelfranco Veneto, present-day Italy, c.1477-Venice, 1510) Italian painter.He is one of the darkest figures in the history of art, since nothing is known about his life and very little about his work; His canvases also have numerous attribution problems, among other reasons because he left several paintings unfinished, which were completed by other painters.Despite this, it can be affirmed without a doubt that the artist was an innovator, and also a fundamental figure in the evolution of Venetian painting.

He arrived in Venice around 1500 and trained in Giovanni Bellini's workshop, before settling on his own in association with Vincenzo Catena.He participated in two important public commissions: a canvas for the audience room of the ducal palace (lost) and the exterior frescoes of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, in collaboration with Titian.In addition, he painted on commission for private collectors, and in this he differs from the other artists of his time, who worked mainly for large public or Church institutions.

He is considered the inventor of the emotional landscape, that is, of the nature represented depending on the artist's state of mind.A good example of this is his most admired work, The Tempest (c.1508, Accademia Gallery, Venice), where the theme seems a mere pretext for the realization of an exercise in creative imagination; this painting, with cold and saturated colors, had a great influence on later painting.

The Tempest (c.1508), by Giorgione

The canvas represents a soldier and a breastfeeding woman to a child in a landscape of innumerable shades of green.The atmosphere of imminent storm, underlined by the lightning that illuminates the clouds, is the indisputable protagonist of the canvas, and, therefore, it seems irrelevant to decide whether it is the discovery of Moses the child, of the Holy Family on their flight to Egypt, of an episode from the legend of Genoveva or, as has been claimed, an image sui géneris of Adam and Eve; the characters of The Tempest have also been interpreted, in allegorical key, as personifications of Charity.

In The Tempest , the traditional hierarchical relationship between figures and landscape has been abolished for the benefit of the latter.But in addition, Giorgione was the first painter who subordinated the subject to the evocation of a state of mind, and thus, he often changed his mind during the execution, transforming the original composition.For example, thanks to detailed radiographic examinations, it has been discovered that the soldier that Giorgione painted in The Tempest was originally another female figure, so it is not surprising that his contemporaries were ignorant of the subject of his paintings nor that critics have subsequently failed to define their meanings.This being carried away by temperament and imagination was the birth of the "psychic landscape", and has been considered the most original and transcendent contribution of the Venetian master.

The three philosophers (c.1508-09)

Landscape also plays a major role in another of Giorgione's great creations, The three philosophers (c.1508-09), a painting of uncertain meaning in which it is very innovative that the brushstroke is oriented almost exclusively to the creation of chromatic effects.The figures could be the Magi, who, represented as astrologers, scrutinize with their science the star that announces the birth of the Redeemer.It may also be an evocation of the three ages of man, but the nimbus worn by the oldest character, revealed by radiographic examination, does not clarify matters.

His audacity continued with works such as the Portrait of an old woman (Accademia Gallery, Venice), of unusual realism, or the fantastic Landscape at sunset (1510, National Gallery, London), which demonstrate once again his ability to deviate from prevailing clichés.Giorgione, who according to Vasari was also an excellent musician, achieves the highest expression of his chromatic and sensual poetry in two marvelous oils: the Sleeping Venus (c.1509-1510, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden) , with its amber light, diffuse and seductive, and the Country Concert (which has also been attributed to the young Titian and in any case was finished by him), a beautiful twilight landscape in which the author shows his mastery in treating the atmosphere and tonality.

Regardless of whether the naked women of the Country Concert are courtesans or allegorical figures, the plastic beauty of the opulent forms under the light, the warm shades of red that contrast with the green and the natural attitudes of men give us an impression of ancient and modern life at the same time, like the activity of the shepherd in a shady vegetal landscape and the opening, to the left and in the distance, of the horizon towards the setting sun.Because of its modernity, the painting was one of the sources of inspiration for Édouard Manet's Lunch on the Grass , a forerunner of Impressionism who caused a scandal in 1862 when he presented his painting at the Salon d'Automne in Paris.Giorgione died prematurely, probably from the plague, when he was in his early thirties.