Giorgione (redirected from Giorgione da Castelfranco)

Giorgione (jōrjô`nā), c.1478–1510, Venetian painter, b. Castelfranco Veneto; fellow student of Titian under Giovanni Bellini in Venice. Giorgione was known also as Zorgo or Zorgi da Castelfranco and as Giorgio Barbarelli. Almost nothing is known of his life except that he worked in Venice, undertook various important commissions in oil and fresco, and died of the plague in his early 30s. Legend concedes him great personal charm. A major innovator, he is credited with having been the formative influence in the lives of Titian, Pordenone, Sebastiano del Piombo, and Jacopo Palma il Vecchio. Thus, in a sense, 16th-century Venetian painting stems from him. So absolute was his domination that it is impossible to separate with certainty his work from that of his imitators. His frescoes are practically obliterated. The list of his extant works in oil is computed variously at from 4 to 70. But if Giorgione himself is an unknown quantity, his style is not. It was new to Venetian painting both in technique and in spirit. Technically it introduced a greater fusion of all forms and a subordination of local color to the pervading tone, used to emphasize forms in space. This revolution was accomplished simultaneously by Leonardo, but whereas Leonardo tended to suppress color in his opaque shadows, the colors of Giorgione were luminous and warm. The Giorgionesque style was liberating. The ostensible subject no longer limited the artist but became a pretext for self-expression. The specific works associated with Giorgione have the poetic quality of a bucolic dreamworld never recaptured by his famous followers. Among the best authenticated are Madonna with SS. Francis and Liberale (cathedral, Castelfranco Veneto); The Three Philosophers (Vienna); and the puzzling seminude woman with child set in a stormy landscape known as the Tempesta (Academy, Venice). Also celebrated, if more dubious are Concert Champêtre (Louvre); Laura (Vienna); Judith (St. Petersburg); Adoration of the Shepherds (National Gall. of Art, Washington, D.C.); the Concert (Pitti Palace); and Judgment of Solomon and Trial of Moses (Uffizi). His pastoral Sleeping Venus (Gemäldegalerie, Dresden) was finished by Titian.

Bibliography

See complete ed. of his works by T. Pignatti (1971); studies by G. M. Richter (1937), L. Baldass (1965), and T. Pignatti (1971).

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Giorgione

 or Giorgio da Castelfranco

Sleeping Venus, oil on canvas by Giorgione, c. 1510, landscape …

(credit: Sachsische Landesbibliothek/Abteilung Deutsche Fotothek; photograph, B. Walther)

(born c. 1477/78, Castelfranco Veneto, Republic of Venice [Italy]—died before Nov. 7, 1510, Venice) Italian painter active in Venice. Nothing is known of his early life. The technique, colour, and mood of his pictures suggest that he studied with Giovanni Bellini in Venice in the 1490s. His major public commission was the execution of frescoes on the exterior of the German Exchange, now known only through engravings and ruined fragments. Of the few paintings attributed to Giorgione, two were completed by other artists after his death, one by Titian. Though almost every aspect of his work is debated, including the attribution, dating, and interpretation of paintings associated with him, it is clear that he was a pioneer in the technique of oil painting on canvas and a master of creating mood and mystery, as epitomized in The Tempest (c. 1505), a milestone in Renaissance landscape painting. He had far-reaching influence on portraiture; many early 16th-century artists imitated his style. See also Venetian school.

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Giorgione

Il. original name Giorgio Barbarelli. ?1478--1511, Italian painter of the Venetian school, who introduced a new unity between figures and landscape