txt: The life of Giorgione – www.giorgione2010.it
On the whole, Giorgione’s works continue to elude us, not merely in terms of autography, but also in their most profound meaning. While the surviving and acknowledged paintings by the artist reflect exclusively secular, civic or “private” forms of engagement (even the Castelfranco Altarpiece was actually commissioned by the famous condottiere Tuzio Costanzo), many interpretative keys have been suggested for Giorgione’s work: they have been regarded as philosophical exercises of a Neoplatonic bent on the theme of love, as depictions related to Classical literature, even as manifestos of Jewish culture in Venice. Then comes legend, and what has been constructed on the basis of a very limited number of sources. Among these “inventions” is that concerning the painter’s death from “love sickness” when his lover fled with his disciple Pietro Luzzo da Feltre. This episode, which appears to have been told for the first time only in 1648 by Carlo Ridolfi, ultimately confirms an established fact: that by then the making of myths about Giorgione was already underway.
