In Giorgione’s The Tempest, a bolt of lightning suddenly tears across the sky. The flash, shimmering brightly, cuts through the threatening clouds of an undefined, almost unreal green. It seems to challenge the powerless town, trembling on the horizon. Classical and perhaps Eastern-looking architecture can be glimpsed: several towers, a dome, a bell tower, fleeting signs of an existence hanging in the balance, soon to be overwhelmed by the storm.
Giorgione’s The Tempest
The windows are shuttered; everything is still. Even the trees, elusive and indistinct, seem suspended in a state of apparent tranquillity. It is the final breath before the storm, the last moment of anticipation before the ordeal. Soon, their branches will be shaken by powerful gusts. And yet the painting does not seem to convey excessive alarm: nature itself appears resigned. The vegetation almost envelops the landscape, as though the latter were an intruder, emerging from a distant perspective, a remnant of some long-forgotten memory.
Is it by following the currents and bends of that sinister stream that one can find refuge in the city? Or is it instead the looming danger threatening to sweep away, in its flood, everything that man has painstakingly built? Perhaps the wooden bridge crossing it is safe; perhaps it will collapse-who can say? The city, an allegory of human life, stands on the right bank of the river. On the opposite bank, by contrast, there are only a few ruins. We can see the remains of an abandoned house and two truncated columns.
Description of the painting
Little by little, the viewer’s eye begins to discover new details, new protagonists. This is one of the extraordinary aspects of Giorgione’s The Tempest. The background captures our attention first, and only afterwards do enigmatic figures and elements emerge, calling everything into question. A semi-nude woman sits, seemingly abandoned, on a meadow covering a rocky outcrop. The young woman, her hair gathered in the Renaissance fashion, looks sadly towards us as she nurses her child. She has no shelter from the storm other than a flimsy mantle draped over her shoulders. Here, protection is merely an illusion, an embodiment of false security: every human being wears his own little mantle, convinced that he is sheltered from life’s upheavals.
The cloth partially covers the child too, defenceless and innocent. This is an emblem of unawareness in the face of events that disrupt the course of existence. The storm is approaching, and the woman and her child, in their primal nakedness, stand in stark and unsettling contrast to it. What troubles the viewer is why the woman has no shelter. Is it possible that no one in the city can take her in? Could it be that she has nowhere to rest? Perhaps the young woman is an outcast, for reasons unknown. In her disillusionment, she knows that no one will welcome her. Not even the man watching her from the other side of the river. After all, it would take only a few steps to reach her, yet he merely regards her with indifference. In Giorgione’s The Tempest, everything is contrast, everything an indecipherable enigma.
Giorgione: an enigma within an enigma
Giorgione’s life is itself an indecipherable mystery. The painter’s personal circumstances and biography are the product of a posthumous reconstruction, supported by very few written documents. His existence is attested by Marcantonio Michiel, an important sixteenth-century Venetian art collector who took it upon himself to catalogue numerous works belonging to private collections1. Michiel recorded that a certain Zorzi da Castelfranco had painted two masterpieces, known as the Three Philosophers and The Tempest.
Yet information about this artist was already rather scarce only a few years after his death, since his career had lasted little more than ten years. Even the attribution of his paintings had, over time, become uncertain, sometimes being confused with those of his young collaborator, Titian. Nevertheless, Giorgione was one of the masters of the Venetian Renaissance. Looking at his works today, one is struck by an extraordinary mastery that places him among the great painters in the history of art. However, he did not sign his works, hence the difficulties involved in reconstructing his catalogue2.
We know very little about Giorgione’s life. The first indication of his date of birth comes from Vasari, who places it in 1477–14783. Moreover, all sixteenth-century sources state that Giorgione was born in Castelfranco Veneto. The artist’s full name would therefore have been Giorgio da Castelfranco, known as Zorzi. The name Giorgione, on the other hand, is thought to have derived from his imposing stature.
Tonalism
We don’t know how the young Giorgio came to Venice. Here he may have completed his apprenticeship in the workshop of Giovanni Bellini, although this is by no means certain. More recent sources have instead emphasised his links with the workshop of Vincenzo Catena. Here he began to develop a style of painting based on tonalism, a revolutionary approach that challenged the use in painting of sharp, clearly defined outlines, characteristic of the Florentine Renaissance. In Giorgione’s canvases, figures emerge through a skilful juxtaposition of colours and a delicate balance of chromatic and luminous relationships.
Alongside works on sacred subjects, the artist also developed a body of work characterised by secular themes, often difficult to interpret. The Tempest, generally dated to around 1503–1509, may therefore have been the result of a prestigious private patron’s request for an allegorical representation. Indeed, although some attributions remain disputed, from around 1500 onwards Giorgione’s paintings began to become more mysterious, with an almost esoteric language. The themes became more complex and profound, as in the Three Philosophers. The only dated work bearing the artist’s name is from 1506: the portrait of Laura, now in Vienna. On the reverse, one can read: “De man de maistro Zorzi de Chastel Fr(anco) cholega de maistro Vizenzo Chaena“.
Giorgione died very young, in 1510, during an outbreak of plague, leaving countless unanswered questions about the works he produced and about his own life. Nevertheless, his painting technique and innovations continued to live on for decades in the work of his followers, above all Titian and Sebastiano del Piombo.
Historical background to the painting
The Tempest is an oil painting on canvas, of very modest dimensions (82 × 73 cm). From the outset, scholars have focused their attention on who might have commissioned such an enigmatic work. Marcantonio Michiel mentioned the painting for the first time in 1530, cataloguing it as “paesetto in tela con la tempesta con la cingana e il soldato, fu de man de Zorzi de Castelfranco“. The Tempest was kept in the private home of Gabriele Vendramin, who is thought to have been its patron. In any case, after changing hands several times, the Italian state acquired the painting in 1856 and assigned it to the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice, where it remains today.
Giorgione’s The Tempest as an allegorical painting
Over the centuries, Giorgione’s painting has been subjected to a wide range of interpretations. Some scholars have suggested that it is an allegorical work, governed by a rich and significant symbolism. In a sense, this makes The Tempest a forerunner of artistic modernity. According to Edgar Wind, the work revisits the allegorical dualism between Fortitude and Charity, personified respectively by the man and the woman in the painting4. These were, in fact, virtues of ancient Rome, believed to be necessary for confronting the unforeseen trials of existence. An alchemical interpretation has also been proposed, in connection with the presence of the four fundamental elements of ancient philosophical tradition: earth, fire, air and water5.
Drawing on the interpretation of Giovanni Antonio Amadeo’s Divine Condemnation and the Fate of the Progenitors after Original Sin (Cappella Colleoni, Bergamo), Salvatore Settis, by contrast, believed that the two figures in The Tempest represented Adam and Eve, with the latter nursing their son, Cain, after their expulsion from Paradise. According to the art historian, The Tempest would therefore be a metaphor for the human condition after Original Sin6. However, radiographic examinations carried out on the painting in 1939 revealed that, in the first version, a naked female figure had been painted in place of the young soldier, a detail that makes the interpretation of the work even more complex7.
Giorgione’s The Tempest: a remarkably contemporary painting
Regardless of its interpretation, The Tempest has a universal meaning and remains remarkably relevant today. The work masterfully depicts man’s vulnerability in the face of nature’s unpredictability. The mantle and the staff are illusory instruments through which humanity constructs its false sense of security; they symbolise the pretence of being able to order and control the laws of nature. When confronted with the tumultuous events of life, one may respond through love, embodied in the act of nursing, or through indifference towards others. Giorgione reveals the age-old tension between the ancient and the modern, and the decline of ethical and moral values, reflected in the ruins depicted in the work. The city is destined to be overwhelmed by the storm.
Samuele Corrente Naso
Notes
- D. I. Morelli (edited by), Notizia d’opere di disegno nella prima meta’ del secolo XVI, esistenti in Padova, Cremona, Milano, Pavia, Bergamo, Crema e Venezia, 1800. ↩︎
- A. Fregolent, Giorgione, Electa, Milano, 2001. ↩︎
- G. Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori, Seconda edizione, 1568. ↩︎
- E. Wind, L’eloquenza dei simboli, Adelphi, 1992. ↩︎
- G. F. Hartlaub, Giorgiones Geheimnis: eis kunstgeschichtlicher Beitrag zur Mystik der Renaissance, Munchen, Allgemeine Verlagsanstalt, 1925. ↩︎
- S. Settis, La “Tempesta” interpretata. Giorgione, i committenti, il soggetto, Einaudi, 2005. ↩︎
- Ibidem. ↩︎
