When Giorgione Died: Metaphor-biography-art

Giorgione died in Venice in 1510. Aside from the year, everything else about his passing is supposition. Age? Thirty-three, give or take a few years. Cause of death? The plague, perhaps. Similar uncertainty clouds his career. He was probably, though not certainly, apprenticed to Giovanni Bellini. His oeuvre may consist of six or sixty paintings. Experts have never reached consensus. Mystery is the key word whenever Giorgione or his art is discussed. Masterpieces like the Tempest and Sleeping Venus are said to have introduced an element of poetry into Renaissance painting. But the poetry is generally defined so loosely it has little connection to actual poetry of any period. Otherwise, interpretation falters and lapses into discussion of enigma and mystery. In a radical departure from the authors of previous monographs on Giorgione, Elizabeth Smith accepts mystery as the one solid truth about the artist. Instead of rehearsing unanswerable questions of meaning or attribution, she examines the metaphors that have endowed Giorgione with an enduring role in the Renaissance and its legacy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These metaphors grow from the response to his death – the sudden desire to own “a Giorgione” and the refusal of collectors to sell paintings they already owned. Thereafter, the pleasures and dangers of possessing became central to art and writing about Giorgione. By 1900 he was all but synonymous with art meant to be a personal prize; themes of self-possession and privacy; the experience of love so jealous it turns destructive. Smith's book will be of interest to students of literature as well as art historians. It connects Giorgione to portrayals of Venice in Shakespeare among other artists. Venice too has long been understood through mystery and jealous love. AUTHOR: Elizabeth K. Smith is an independent scholar based in Venice. ILLUSTRATIONS 48 colour illustrations