Editing Giorgione (section)

== Life ==
What little is known of Giorgione's life is given in [[Giorgio Vasari]]'s ''[[Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects]]''. He came from the small town of [[Castelfranco Veneto]], 40&nbsp;km inland from Venice. His name sometimes appears as ''Zorzo''; the variant ''Giorgione'' (or ''Zorzon'') may be translated "Big George". It is unclear how early in boyhood he went to Venice, but stylistic evidence supports the statement of [[Carlo Ridolfi]] that he served his apprenticeship there under [[Giovanni Bellini]]; there he settled and rose to prominence as a master.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Vasari|first1=Giorgio|last2=Conaway Bondanella|first2=Julia|last3=Bondanella|first3=Peter|title=The Lives of the Artists|date=1991|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=New York|isbn=978-0-19-953719-8|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/livesofartists0000vasa_k5j0}}; In 2017 at the [[University of Sydney Library]], a librarian discovered an original Giorgione sketch that included a definitive date and cause of death for the artist, with an ink inscription that reads "''1510 Ihs Maria. On the day of 17 September, Giorgione of Castelfranco, a very excellent artist died of the plague in Venice at the age of 36 and he rests in peace"'' {{Cite web|url=https://digital.library.sydney.edu.au/nodes/view/7500|title=Dante's Divine Comedy with Giorgione illustration and death notice|website=University of Sydney Library|access-date=2019-02-24}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Slattery |first1=Luke |title=Divine discovery: Renaissance art found by Sydney University librarian |url=https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/visual-arts/divine-discovery-renaissance-art-found-by-sydney-university-librarian/news-story/77420fce50252209f1c4daf877bea896?nk=56239546460dc1c65cb39d13c7303445-1551048047 |access-date=24 February 2019 |newspaper=The Australian |date=16 February 2019}}</ref>

Contemporary documents record that his talent was recognized early. In 1500, when he was in his twenties, he was chosen to paint portraits of the [[Doge of Venice|Doge]] [[Agostino Barbarigo]] and the [[condottiere]] Consalvo Ferrante. In 1504, he was commissioned to paint an altarpiece in memory of another condottiere, Matteo Costanzo, in the cathedral of his native town, Castelfranco. In 1507, he received, at the order of the [[Council of Ten]], partial payment for a picture (subject unknown) in which he was engaged for the Hall of the Audience in the [[Doge's Palace, Venice|Doge's Palace]]. From 1507 to 1508 he was employed, with other artists of his generation, to decorate with frescoes the exterior of the newly rebuilt [[Fondaco dei Tedeschi]] (or German Merchants' Hall) at Venice, having already done similar work on the exterior of the Casa Soranzo, the Casa Grimani alli Servi and other Venetian palaces. Very little of this work now survives.

[[File:Giorgione - Young Woman (“Laura”) - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|''[[Laura (Giorgione)|Laura]]'' (1506), [[Kunsthistorisches Museum]], [[Vienna]], Austria]]
Vasari mentions his meeting with [[Leonardo da Vinci]] on the occasion of the Tuscan master's visit to Venice in 1500. All accounts agree in representing Giorgione as a person of distinguished and romantic charm, a great lover and a musician, given to express in his art the sensuous and imaginative grace, touched with poetic melancholy, of Venetian life of his time. They represent him further as having made in Venetian painting an advance analogous to that made in Tuscan painting by Leonardo more than twenty years before.

He was very closely associated with [[Titian]]; although Vasari says that Titian was Giorgione's disciple, Ridolfi says that they both were pupils of [[Giovanni Bellini]] and lived together in his home.<ref>Ridolfi, Carlo, ''The Life of Titian'', edited by Julia Conaway Bondanella and [[Peter Bondanella]], [[Bruce Cole]], and Jody Robin Shiffman; translated by Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996, p. 60. </ref> They worked together on the Fondaco dei Tedeschi frescoes, and Titian finished at least some paintings of Giorgione after his death, although which ones remains controversial.

Giorgione also introduced a new range of subjects. Besides [[altarpiece]]s and portraits he painted pictures that told no story, whether biblical or classical, or if they professed to tell a story, neglected the action and simply embodied in form and color moods of lyrical or romantic feeling, much as a musician might embody them in sounds. Innovating with the courage and felicity of genius, he had for a time an overwhelming influence on his contemporaries and immediate successors in the Venetian school, including [[Titian]], [[Sebastiano del Piombo]], [[Palma il Vecchio]], [[Giovanni Busi|il Cariani]], [[Giulio Campagnola]] (and his brother), and even on his already eminent master, Giovanni Bellini. In the Venetian mainland, ''Giorgionismo'' strongly influenced [[Morto da Feltre]], [[Domenico Capriolo]], and [[Domenico Mancini]].

Giorgione died of the [[Bubonic plague|plague]] then raging, on the 17th of September, 1510.<ref>{{cite web |last1=University of Sydney Library |title=Dante's Divine Comedy with Giorgione illustration and death notice |url=https://digital.library.sydney.edu.au/nodes/view/7500 |website=Digital Collections |access-date=23 May 2021}}</ref> He was usually thought to have died and been buried on the island of [[Poveglia]] in the Venetian lagoon,<ref>[http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06564c.htm Catholic Encyclopedia]</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12307/12307-h/12307-h.htm|title=Giorgione |author= Herbert Frederick Cook|year=1904}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8pMxAQAAMAAJ|title=Archivio veneto|year=1894}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mT6cugTMf2cC&q=giorgione+poveglia|title=Masters in Arts: A Series of Illustrated Monographs ... Giorgioni ...|year=1903|page=446}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/visionofnaturetr00tobi|url-access=registration|title=A Vision of Nature|publisher=Kent State University Press|isbn=978-0-87338-483-4|last1=Tobias|first1=Michael|date=1995|page=[https://archive.org/details/visionofnaturetr00tobi/page/130 130]}}</ref> but an archival document published for the first time in 2011 places his death on the island of Lazzareto Nuovo; both were used as places of [[quarantine]] in times of plague.<ref>[http://burlington.org.uk/media_new/files/press_release_giorgione.pdf Press release, 2011], ''[[The Burlington Magazine]]''; [http://www.3pipe.net/2011/10/giorgione-in-early-modern-sources.html Three-Pipe problem] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140503184806/http://www.3pipe.net/2011/10/giorgione-in-early-modern-sources.html |date=2014-05-03 }}; [http://www.ilgiornaledellarte.com/articoli/2011/5/108380.html Il Giornale d'Arte (in Italian)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140806220015/http://www.ilgiornaledellarte.com/articoli/2011/5/108380.html |date=2014-08-06 }}</ref> October 1510 is also the date of a letter by [[Isabella d'Este]] to a Venetian friend; asking him to buy a painting by Giorgione; the letter shows she was aware he was already dead. Significantly, the reply a month later said the painting was not to be had at any price.

His name and work continue to exercise a spell on posterity. But to identify and define, among the relics of his age and school, precisely what that work is, and to distinguish it from the similar work of other men whom his influence inspired, is a very difficult matter. Although there are no longer any supporters of the "Pan Giorgionismus"<ref>An old art historians' jibe at {{cite journal|jstor=865045|title=A Clue to Giorgione's Late Style|first=George Martin|last=Richter|journal=The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs|date=1 January 1932|volume=60|issue=348|pages=123–132}}</ref> which a century ago claimed for Giorgione nearly every painting of the time that at all resembles his manner, there are still, as then, exclusive critics who reduce to half a dozen the list of extant pictures that they will admit to be by this painter.