Giorgione

The first three decades of the sixteenth century represent, visually and intellectually, the most exciting phase of the Renaissance in Venice—when Giorgione and the young Titian, together with Sebastiano del Piombo, Palma Vecchio, and others, were working alongside the older master Giovanni Bellini. This beautiful book presents an innovative survey of sixty Venetian Renaissance paintings of the caliber of Bellini and Titian’s Feast of the Gods in Washington and Giorgione’s Laura and Three Philosophers in Vienna.

Unlike previous surveys of the period, this book refrains from dividing up the artists represented and instead explores the interrelationships between them. Through a series of thematic sections, the authors trace the rise of secular subjects—pastoral landscapes, female nudes, and romantic portraits—and the transformation of religious ones as well as innovations in style and technique. Cutting across genres, the book also focuses on the overarching themes of music, love, and time.

Featuring essays by leading scholars, detailed entries on some of the most renowned pictures of sixteenth-century Italy, and revealing technical information, Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and the Renaissance of Venetian Painting is an essential volume to own.

The Tempest is Giorgione's most enigmatic painting. It is a depiction of Giorgione's own family, of the "family of man" tale from Boccaccio, or of the myth of Apollo's birth? In this remarkable study, Salvatore Settis uses the mystery of the painting to shed light on the relationship between artist, patron, work, and critic. The result is a brilliant piece of detective work in the history and sociology of culture that stresses the function of Giorgione's art for the emerging, classically educated connoisseur elite of sixteenth-century Venice.

This extraordinary exhibition catalogue explores the rare works of one of the most enigmatic painters of the Renaissance, Zorzi da Castelfranco-universally known as Giorgione (Castelfranco Veneto, 1478-Venezia, 1510)-examining 15 out of an oeuvre of his 25 attributed paintings.
Fellow student of Titian under Giovanni Bellini in Venice, almost nothing is known of Giorgione's life except that he worked in Venice, undertook various important commissions in oil and fresco, and died of the plague in his early 30s. A major innovator, he is acclaimed as the father of modern Venetian painting of the 16th century. In his revolutionary brushwork he skilfully combined Leonardo's sfumato with the colours and the thin layers of paint favoured by the Old Flemish masters to give a new dimension to light and colour.
This monograph features masterpieces by Giorgione such as The Tempest, The Old Woman, The Nude, the recently restored Altarpiece of the Cathedral of Castelfranco, Christ Carrying the Cross, Three Philosophers and Laura as well as the only drawing by Giorgione View of Castel San Zeno at Montagnana and a Sitting Figure.
Some seminal examples of works by Bellini, Titian, Dürer and Cranach help to place Giorgione's art in context and to document his influence on later painters.
A team of international art historians and critics contribute original essays to the richly illustrated and well-documented book that features new discoveries in Giorgione's technique, an analysis of the results of restoration, and an updated bibliography.