A painting filled with mystery

            I love going back to Venice. There is no other place comparable in the world.
My intention was to visit the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and write about it ... but my room’s view was the wooden bridge spanning the Grand Canal just in front of the Gallerie de la Accademia and the temptation to go back to the Galleria was too strong to resist.

            I had not been there since a long time ago and did not remember the decadent and chaotic state of the rooms, which produce an intense halo of romance. Two months ago I had the chance of seeing The Tempest, in the Hermitage of San Petersburg. They had welcomed the masterpiece with high respect and admiration and it was beautifully displayed and lit. Yesterday, at the Accademia I was again trapped by its brilliance.

            A lot has been surmised about this painting, including a range of interpretations ranging from pastoral to mythological and biblical. Amidst all these speculations however, two things are certain: the dominance and beauty of the natural setting - with the impending storm (tempest) churning away in the background. Before Giorgione, other artists had, indeed, painted figures with a landscape background, but the perfect blend of Nature and human nature was his achievement.

            The quality of line and the sensuousness of color nowhere cast their spells over us more strangely than in Giorgione's pictures, and by these means he created new and extraordinary effects. In these purely pictorial qualities he is supreme and claims a place with the few quintessential artists of the world.

            As an instrument of expression, then, color is used by Giorgione more naturally and effectively than it is by any of the Venetian painters. It appeals directly to our senses, like rare old stained glass, and seems to be of the very essence of the object itself. Maybe this painting doesn't "mean" anything at all; maybe, like music, it simply evokes a mood, a feeling.