Chris Cunningham

Giorgio or Zorzi da Vedelago or da Castelfranco , known as Giorgione (Vedelago or Castelfranco Veneto 1477 - Venice 1510) is the first Venetian great painter of the Italian Cinquecento.

Its birth dates and of death were provided by Vasari in its Vite. The birth date, 1477, seem probable because it is coherent with the artistic activity of Giorgione at the end of the 15th century.

One is unaware of his patronym very: Giorgio , into Venetian Zorzo or Zorzi , of Castelfranco Veneto, birthplace. One says that the nickname of Giorgione ( Giorgione or Zorzon means large Georges ) was given to him by Vasari, “for his pace and his nobility of soul”. According to the historians, it would be of very humble extraction, whereas Carlo Ridolfi, in Maraviglia dell' arte (1648), writes that “Giorgione was born with Vedelago within the easiest family from the county”.

The Giorgione painter

Giorgione is known for the romantic quality of its work, and for the fact that very little with paintings (around six) is recognized as being of its hand. It did not sign its works. With its sudden death of the plague, it probably left some not finished work, which could be completed by its pupils Titien or Sebastiano del Piombo. Uncertainty resulting from the difficulty of identifying its works and the significance of its art made of Giorgione the most mysterious figure in Western painting.

In Castelfranco, it always painted in the style “Castelfranco Madonna”, a rather conventional image of crowned Virgin, with saints on each side. Its painting however marks a departure in Venetian art, with its curiously introverted saints and its significant modulations of color like a veil unifying painting. This is painted with tiny spots of technical color that Giorgione introduced into the oil-base paint, derived from the techniques of illumination of manuscript. Those gave to works of Giorgione the gleam " magique" light for which they were famous.

Its most famous work is however the three philosophers and the storm . The significance of these paintings is mysterious and these last remain strange even after the historians of art tried to see them like conventional subjects. The first depicts three figures close to an empty and dark cave. That seems to suggest the cave of Plato and the three king-magi, but the table remains not very clear. It is also true table named the storm in which a soldier armed with a lance on a side and a woman giving the center on other side seem to await the storm.

Tempesta

The significance of this table is not very clear, and until now, no interpretation was still rather satisfactory. Giorgione painted on the left a woman who nurses a child and, on the line, is a man upright who looks at them. There does not exist any dialog between them. They are both separated by a small brook and ruins. In the content, one sees a city on which a storm is ready to burst.

Several interpretations were brought to include/understand what Giorgione wanted to represent; here for example three possible readings:

Edgar Wind sees in the man a soldier, symbol of force and of courage and the woman represents for him charity (since, in the Roman tradition, charity was represented by a woman who nursed). Force and charity would be thus what Giorgione implemented.
Salvatore Settis as for him, regards the table as the representation of Adam and Eve, after to be driven out Paradise.
Lastly, there is also the interpretation of Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub which finds the illustration of the four elements there: water, ground, fire and air.

Nobody knows, per hour of today, the real significance of this table; as much of its works, Giorgione gives a direction hidden to Tempesta , difficult to find and affirm.

Works which are allotted to him

Mosè bambino went prova dei carboni ardenti , Florence, Uffizi, oil on fabric, 89 cm × 72 cm, (1500-1501)
Giudizio di Salomone , Florence, Uffizi, oil on fabric, 89 cm × 72 cm (1500-1501)
Elia nel deserto , Rotterdam, Museum Boymans van Beuningen, blood on paperboard, 20,3 cm × 29 cm (1501-1502)
David E Giuditta , Montagnana, Duomo, fresco (1501-1502)
Giuditta , Saint Petersbourg, Musée of the Hermitage, oil on fabric, 144 cm × 66,5 cm (1502)
Madonna collar Bambino FRA I santi Nicasio (O Giorgio O Liberal) E Francesco (Pala Costanzo, Pala di Castelfranco) , Duomo of Castelfranco Veneto, Duomo, oil on fabric, 200 cm × 152 cm (1502)
Ritratto di giovane (Giustiniani) , Berlin, Staatliche Museum, oil, 58 cm × 46 cm, (1503-1504)
Adorazione dei Magi , London, National Gallery, fabric, 29 × 81 cm, (1503-1504
Crowned Famiglia (Benson) , Washington, National Gallery, oil on fabric, 37,3 × 45,5 cm, (1503-1504)
Adorazione dei pastori (Allendale) , Washington, National Gallery, oil on fabric, 91 cm × 111 cm, (1504-1505)
I tre filosofi , Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, oil, 123,5 cm × 144,5 cm, (1504-1505)
Giovani Borgherini collar maestro-astrologo , Washington, National Gallery, oil, 47 cm × 60,7 cm, (1505-1506)
Ritratto di giovane sposa (Laura) , Vienna, Kunsthistorische Museum, oil strengthened on fabric, 41 cm × 33,6 cm (1506) (autograph with the back)
the vecchia , Venice, Gallery dell' Accademia, oil, 68 cm × 59 cm, (1506)
Venerates dormiente , Dresden, Gemaldegalerie, oil, 108 cm × 175 cm (1507)
Garzone idiot freccia , Vienna, Kunsthistorische Museum (1507-1508)
the tempesta , Venice, Gallerie dell' Accademia, oil, 82 cm × 73 cm, 1507 - 1508
Nuda , Venice, Gallery dell' Accademia, fresco (1508)
Ritratto di uomo in armi , Vienna oils (1508-1510)
Ritratto di gentiluomo (Terris) , San Diego (California), San Diego Museum off Art (1508-1510)
Garzone idiot flauto , Hampton Court, Royal Collection (1508-1510)
Autoportrait as a David , Braunschweig, oil, 52 cm × 43 cm (1509-1510)

Internal bonds

Its works with the Offices of Florence of which the portrait of It Gattamelata that one allots to him.
Giorgio Vasari quotes it and describes its biography in Quickly the

External bond

Web Gallery off Art

Encyclopedia Bertaux

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