Giorgione Biography

(born 1477/78, Castelfranco Veneto, Republic of Venice [Italy]—died before Nov. 7, 1510, Venice) extremely influential Italian painter who was one of the initiators of a High Renaissance style in Venetian art. His qualities of mood and mystery were epitomized in The Tempest ( 1505), an evocative pastoral scene, which was among the first of its genre in Venetian painting.

Life

Nothing is really known about Giorgione's personal life except the legends reported by the biographer and Mannerist artist Giorgio Vasari in the two editions (1550 and 1568) of his Lives. Giorgione's name is given in two surviving documents of 1507 and 1508 as Zorzi da Castelfranco (in Venetian dialect); i.e., Giorgio of Castelfranco. The form Giorgione (or Zorzon), which is customarily used today, first appears in the 1528 inventory of the Grimani Collection. His name means “tall George,” or “big George,” implying that he was a large man. Tradition holds that he was handsome and amorous. Correspondence dated Oct. 25, 1510, between the celebrated Renaissance patron of the arts Isabella d'Este of Mantua and her agent Taddeo Albano at Venice mentions Giorgione's death as having occurred recently, probably caused by the plague that was raging in Venice at that time. Vasari's biography is the earliest. It emphasizes the artist's humble origin, his elevated mind, and his personal charm, but this characterization undoubtedly was a product of Vasari's imagination, based upon the poetic quality of Giorgione's paintings.

That the young painter went to Venice to study about 1490 under Giovanni Bellini, the greatest Venetian master of the day, is undeniable. The technique, colour, and mood of Giorgione's pictures are clearly related to Bellini's late style.

Works

The commission of 1507 for a painting or paintings to be placed in the Audience Hall of the Ducal Palace at Venice was perhaps never completed, since no further notice of the work is recorded. Giorgione's principal public commission was the execution of frescoes on the exterior of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi (the German Exchange), where he painted the figures on the facade over the canal. The frescoes over the street were carried out by the young Titian, perhaps under Giorgione's direction. These works, documented in 1508, are lost, except for fragments that contain faint outlines of figures.