This is a letter from Michael White on Giorgione. Its a very impressive interpretation on an artist who has confounded the experts; the secrecy and enigma surrounding the works such as Tempesta which revolves around an eternal triangle of love, desire and identity under a prohibitive weight of imagery. Efforts to decipher it appear to lose themselves in a labyrinth of symbols…
I have been a Giorgione admirer since 1989,it has become an obsession, so that I have even read all of the articles,books about Giorgione. I have copied some of his Paintings! The Tempest, Three Philosophers, Adultress,Christ carry the Cross,The Prado painting,and some that ( George Martin ) Richter attributed(1937). NOW IT HAS COME TO MY ATTENTION THROUGH RENATA SEGRE`S DISCOVERY OF ZORZON`S BACKGROUND. HIS FATHER,MOTHER ,STEPMOTHER AND THE TWO FAMILIES IN CASTELFRANCO LA TEMPESTA & CALLEGARI IN FEUD WITH EACH OTHER.
---But Laura's erotic self-revelation is calm, almost severe. She doesn't look at us but away, to the side; she is not interested in our gaze - there is something else going on. Her hair is bound modestly, with one strand hanging loose, and the white lace that flutters around her like an airy snake gives this painting a mythic feeling, like an illustration in an emblem book representing a virtue or talent. It is the laurel sprouting behind her that completes this intimation of allegory - but don't expect answers as to what it might be about...And yet, there is no sense of a man simply showing off his sexual servant. "Laura" is in on the secret. Read More:http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2003/feb/22/art image:http://www.theartwolf.com/masterworks/giorgione.htm
So I have a theory about the The Tempest(connection Laura,Judith & Holofernes, Sleeping Venus,( the woman has a main place)Self-portrait)
as David** (Golaith the father figure for Zorzon). The father symbol Golaith`s head is made small & Giorgione larger!(neg.oedipal complex?)
represented by his mother Altadona with her child is Giorgione and the man across from here I Giorgione´s father.**
The women being used in these paintings is the symbol of his love for his mother(Freudian) and opposition to father Giovanni Gasparini.** These two people have taken sides in the feud between family La Tempesta & Callegari. Giovanni supported Callegari family. While his wife supported La Tempesta family. After this family initiated the documentation of his belongings after Giorgione`s death. Altadona is placed on the side of the “Coat of arms on the buildings? There is great division between the parents shown by the little hill and the stream which it´s on going and classical conflict represented by the columns.
---Over the centuries, a number of factors have fuelled the mystery that surrounds the Venetian artist Giorgione: his premature death, the continuing debate about his autograph works, the loss of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi frescos, the alleged rivalry with Titian, and the suggestion, without support, that Giorgione belonged to the Jewish community. As a result, his paintings have proved difficult to understand. Only a few years separate Giorgione's two most representative works — The Tempest and The Three Philosophers. Both paintings have been seen to contain biblical references (the theme of Adam and Eve for the first work and the Magi for the second). Mythological and secular meanings have also been detected: The Tempest as an erotic allegory, for instance, or references to the three ages of man in The Three Philosopher. Radiography has revealed radical alterations during the creation of the works; the young soldier in The Tempest was initially a female nude, while one of the philosophers was previously a Moor. This suggests a considerable amount of manipulation of the subject matter and implies that the final outcomes were deliberately left ambivalent.---Read More:http://www.all-art.org/history230-6-1.html image:http://www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/Giorgione_Three_Philosophers.html
Violence between the two families is represented by the Storm. The old ruins behind Giovanni represents how old the feud is to the present day(the modern building behind Altadona(mother) the time the Tempest was painted. The mother Altadona is half naked and vulnerable while the GIovanni is fully clothed. The Jewish* interest from Giorgione´s side can be related to the La Tempesta family maybe roots from there? The two paintings in Florence, Moses and Salomon. He always put the woman in front and raised her above men (Madonna i C-franco)och independent(Sleeping Venus, Laura, Pastoral Concert (woman outside of the men conversation)
---The work is dimensionally and thematically similar to the Judgement of Salomon, also in the Uffizi, and is dated to the years immediately after Giorgione's moving to Venice. The episode is taken from the Talmud, and was probably commissioned by an acculturated person who was not entirely following to the official Roman Catholic positions. Read More:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Test_of_Fire_of_Moses_%28Giorgione%29
ADDENDUM:
Jonathan Jones, (Guardian):When Walter Pater wrote about the art of Venice, he called his essay The School of Giorgione. Even when Pater published his hymn to the meaningless, hedonist beauty of Giorgione (c1476-1510), he had to admit that a large oeuvre was shrinking, that many paintings attributed to Giorgione might not be his. Today there are very few that can be attributed to Giorgione, and Titian has emerged from his shadow.
Giorgione’s myth is seductive; no wonder Pater succumbed. Giorgione – Giorgio da Castelfranco – lived fast and left a beautiful, if small, corpus of pictures. He died in the plague in 1510 in Venice, in his 30s. It was said, adding to his romance, that he was in love with a woman who was infected, and chose to stay with her and die. At the time of his death he was renowned, his paintings coveted.
The romance of Giorgione is in his short, mysterious life, but also in the enigma of his paintings. If the Pastoral Concert in the Louvre is now attributed to Titian, there is still the turbulent and unique Tempest. Giorgione’s hermetic picture of a woman and child and a man looking on as louring storm-clouds swarm the landscape is a new kind of visual story, his own private poem; it has never been satisfactorily “explained” through literary sources. Pater was not wrong to see Giorgione as a founder of genres, an enigmatic sensualist whose paintings obscurely fascinate.
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Theodore K. Rabb:VENICE. Giorgione is notorious for his elusiveness in the written records o
s day. We have not even known his surname. But a remarkable recent discovery has opened a small window onto his private life. Thanks to the rich holdings of Venice’s Archivio di Stato (state archive), and the alertness of the historian Renata Segre, a document has come to light that identifies his family and describes his possessions at his death.
The document Segre discovered is an inventory, drawn up at the order of a judge in the Venetian magistracy (Giudice del proprio), on 14 March 1511, and amended five months later, on 13 October. Referring to Giorgione in the Latin genitive case as Giorgii pictoris (that is, Giorgio the painter), it names his father as Giovanni Gasparini. Giovanni’s widow is identified as Alessandra, because it was her heir, Francesco Fisoli, who requested the inventory, but she is not called Giorgione’s mother, so that question remains open. It is a breakthrough, nevertheless, that we now know that the artist’s full name was Giorgio Gasparini.Read More:http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/The-elusive-Giorgione-revealed/23834
Read More:http://www.burlington.org.uk/magazine/back-issues/2011/201106/
Read More:http://www.museogiorgione.it/default.asp?id=1&ACT=5&content=353&mnu=1
Read More:http://iaste.berkeley.edu/pdfs/14.2d-Spr03bertagninetal-sml.pdf
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