Giorgione (i.e. 'Great George'), the name conferred, by reason of his stature and his artistic eminence, on Giorgio Barbarella, who was born about 1477, near Castelfranco, in the Venetian province of Treviso, the illegitimate son, as it is believed, of a member of the Barbarella family by a peasant girl of Vedelago. At an early age he came to Venice, and studied painting under Giovanni Bellini, where Titian was his fellow-pupil. He soon attained fame as a painter, developing a manner freer and larger in handling and design than that of his master, and characterised by intense poetic feeling, by great beauty and richness of colouring, and by a constant reference to nature, as is very visible in the landscape backgrounds of his figure-pieces, in which he introduced the scenery that surrounded his birthplace. While still young he executed portraits of Gonzalvo of Cordova, of the Doges Agostino Barbarigo and Leonardo Loredano, and of Queen Cornaro of Cyprus, who then resided at Asolo, not far from Castelfranco; but these works have disappeared. One of the earliest of his productions that have survived is an 'Enthroned Madonna with SS. Francis and Liberale,' an altarpiece commissioned, probably in 1504, by Tuzio Costanzo for the church of Castelfranco—where Giorgione also executed frescoes. These latter perished when the edifice was destroyed, but the altarpiece is still preserved in the new church. It has been reproduced by the Arundel Society, and the oil study for its figure of S. Liberale is in the National Gallery, London. In Venice also Giorgione was extensively employed in fresco-painting, decorating in this manner the exterior of his own house in the Campo di San
Silvestro, of the Soranzo Palace, of the palace of Andrea Loredano, of the Casa Flangini, and, along with Titian, of the Fondaco de' Tedeschi when it was rebuilt in 1506. Some fragments of the last-named frescoes are all that now remains of his work of this nature. The critics are much divided as to the easel-pictures which may be correctly attributed to Giorgione, and the best authorities reject by far the greater number that bear his name in the various public galleries. The picture known as 'The Family of Giorgione,' in the collection of the late Prince Giovanelli at Venice; that titled 'The Three Philosophers,' in the Belvedere, Vienna; and the 'Sleeping Venus,' in the Dresden Gallery, are admittedly genuine: but we can no longer regard as undoubtedly from his brush even such noble compositions as the 'Concert Cham-pêtre' of the Louvre, and that 'Concert' of the Pitti which seems to embody the very spirit of music, an art to which, as we learn from Vasari, the painter was devoted, his skill as a singer and lute-player having procured his admission into the most distinguished circles of Italian society. The former is now attributed by Crowe and Cavalcaselle to the school of Del Piombo, and the latter—which these authorities esteem one of the greatest of the master's pictures—is regarded by Morelli as 'for certain not a work of Giorgione,' but probably an early and much repainted production of Titian. Giorgione died at Venice in 1511, in his thirty-fourth year. He ranks with the very greatest of Venetian painters, and his example powerfully influenced such of his contemporaries as Sebastian del Piombo, Pordenone, and even Titian himself.