Interesting Art Stories: 31. The Tempest, Giorgione, ACJ Art Academy

How are you? 

On every Thursday, I am introducing the stories about various artists and their paintings with the title “Interesting Art Stories”.

The 31st story for this week is “The Tempest” by Giorgione, an Italian painter of the High Renaissance. 

Giorgione

“The Tempest” is a Renaissance painting by the Italian master Giorgione between 1506 and 1508, commissioned by the Venetian noble Gabriele Vendramin. Also known in Italy as "The Gypsy woman and the soldier" or "The Gypsy girl and the soldier", the painting is now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, Italy. 

Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice, Italy

The meaning of the painting is unknown and the painting remains the world’s most enigmatic painting, despite considerable debate and discussion among art historians.

A woman sits and feeds her baby beneath a thunderous sky outside the walls of an unnamed city. The woman's posture in the painting is unusual, normally when feeding the baby, the mother places the baby on her lap, but in this painting the baby appears to be on the mother's side. 

A man, holding a long stick to the left of the painting, is standing in balance with the woman to the right of the painting. He is looking at the left with a smile, but does not seem to be looking at the woman. 

The woman has been described as a gypsy, a prostitute, or Eve, and the man as a soldier, a shepherd, a gypsy or a young aristocrat. One interesting fact of this painting is the results of the X-rays that another nude woman was originally painted in the man’s place. On the rooftop on the right of the painting, there is a stork, which sometimes represents the love of parents for their children. 

This painting seems to anticipate the storm when referring to a thunderous sky with lightning. The green and blue colors dominate the painting and the lighting is soft. In addition, the landscape is not a mere background, but makes a significant contribution to this painting.

There are no definitive explanation or interpretation left in documents for this painting. 

Some people claim that the painting represents the flight into Egypt, the contents of the Bible where Joseph and Mary fled to Egypt with the infant Jesus to escape the persecution of King Herod, while others claim that it is a scene from the Greek mythology such as Paris of Troy and his wife Oenone, or Iasion, the son of Electra and Zeus, and Demeter, the goddess of the harvest and agriculture, who gave birth to his sons, or from an ancient Greek pastoral novel.

The Flight into Egypt, Giotto di Bondone (1304–1306)

Paris and Oenone, Pieter Lastman (1619)

There is also another claim that the city in the painting represents the Paradise, and the man and woman are Adam and Eve with their son Cain. In this case, the lightning would represent God who expelled them from the Garden of Eden. Others also claim that it is a scene from a moral allegorical book, or that Giorgione simply painted without a particular subject in mind. 

Adam and Eve, Jacob Jordaens (1640s)

There is one anecdote about this painting: in September 1943 Professor Pasquale Rotondi, an Italian art historian, famous for having saved about 10,000 Italian works of art from the destruction and looting of Nazi troops during World War II, hid this painting under his bed and was able to protect it from German troops.

It is said that this was Lord Byron's favorite painting because the ambiguity of both its theme and symbol of the painting allowed viewers to create their own stories.

Also, Jan Morris, a Welsh writer, wrote that this painting changed the way she looked at painting. Fascinated with the subject of this painting and the enigmatic feeling that permanently stays with it, she called it a "haunted painting" in which the dead Giorgione actually inhabits.

Thank you.

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