The Tempest (The Storm)(detail)

This painting, the meaning of which has been greatly debated, marks a moment of capital importance in the renovation of the Venetian style painting, and perhaps is the most representative of the very few genuine surviving works of Giorgione.The vigour of cultural life at the beginning of the sixteenth century provided exactly the right fertile ground for the personality of Giorgione. With Giovanni Bellini and Vittore Carpaccio as examples in his early training and with his attentive interest in Northern European painting of Belgium he soon decided to attempt a naturalistic language. Colour attains to new all-important powers of expression of the poetic equivalence of man and nature in a single, fearful apprehension o,f the cosmos.https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/saskia/3110/thumbnail.jp