Italian 1476-1510 Giorgione Galleries For his home town of Castelfranco, Giorgione painted the Castelfranco Madonna, an altarpiece in sacra conversazione form ?? Madonna enthroned, with saints on either side forming an equilateral triangle. This gave the landscape background an importance which marks an innovation in Venetian art, and was quickly followed by his master Giovanni Bellini and others.Giorgione began to use the very refined chiaroscuro called sfumato ?? the delicate use of shades of color to depict light and perspective ?? around the same time as Leonardo. Whether Vasari is correct in saying he learnt it from Leonardo's works is unclear ?? he is always keen to ascribe all advances to Florentine sources. Leonardo's delicate color modulations result from the tiny disconnected spots of paint that he probably derived from manuscript illumination techniques and first brought into oil painting. These gave Giorgione's works the magical glow of light for which they are celebrated. Most entirely central and typical of all Giorgione's extant works is the Sleeping Venus now in Dresden, first recognized by Morelli, and now universally accepted, as being the same as the picture seen by Michiel and later by Ridolfi (his 17th century biographer) in the Casa Marcello at Venice. An exquisitely pure and severe rhythm of line and contour chastens the sensuous richness of the presentment: the sweep of white drapery on which the goddess lies, and of glowing landscape that fills the space behind her, most harmoniously frame her divinity. The use of an external landscape to frame a nude is innovative; but in addition, to add to her mystery, she is shrouded in sleep, spirited away from accessibility to her conscious expression. It is recorded by Michiel that Giorgione left this piece unfinished and that the landscape, with a Cupid which subsequent restoration has removed, were completed after his death by Titian. The picture is the prototype of Titian's own Venus of Urbino and of many more by other painters of the school; but none of them attained the fame of the first exemplar. The same concept of idealized beauty is evoked in a virginally pensive Judith from the Hermitage Museum, a large painting which exhibits Giorgione's special qualities of color richness and landscape romance, while demonstrating that life and death are each other's companions rather than foes. Apart from the altarpiece and the frescoes, all Giorgione's surviving works are small paintings designed for the wealthy Venetian collector to keep in his home; most are under two foot (60 cm) in either dimension. This market had been emerging over the last half of the fifteenth century in Italy, and was much better established in the Netherlands, but Giorgione was the first major Italian painter to concentrate his work on it to such an extent ?? indeed soon after his death the size of such paintings began to increase with the prosperity and palaces of the patrons.  Related Paintings of Giorgione :. | The Castelfranco Madonna, before recent cleaning | Sleeping Venus | Sleeping Venus | The Tempest | The Allendale Nativity Adoration of the Shepherds |
Related Artists:
Robert Scott Duncanson
(1821 - December 21, 1872) was born in Seneca County, New York in 1821.Duncansones father was a Canadian of Scottish descent and his mother was an African American, thus making him ea freeborn person of color.e Duncanson, an artist who is relatively unknown today, painted America, both physically and figuratively, at a time when the country was in turmoil. Beautiful and serene, Duncansones work sheds light on American art that has been forgotten over the years.
Lucas Cranach the Younger
(October 4, 1515 ?C January 25, 1586) was a German Renaissance artist, known for his woodcuts and paintings. He was a son of Lucas Cranach the Elder who began his career as an apprentice in his father's workshop. Henceforth, his own reputation and fame grew. After his father's death, he assumed control over the workshop. The style of their paintings can be so similar that there have been some difficulties in attribution of their works.
Leonardo Bazzaro
(Milan, 1853-1937) was an Italian painter. After picking up the basics in the studio of the painter Gaetano Fasanotti, Bazzaro enrolled at the Brera Academy in Milan, where he was awarded the Fumagalli Prize in 1875. The following years saw a series of perspective views set in Milanese churches and mansions. The success achieved with the public and critics alike at a number of major national and international events prompted him to take an interest also in portraiture and landscape painting, for which his favourite settings were Venice and Chioggia. The works of the 1880s and 1890s also include increasingly intimist scenes of everyday life in the setting of Valsassina, Valle deAosta and Verbano. Bazzaro continued to take part in numerous exhibitions in the region of Lombardy as well as the Venice Biennale and the Rome Quadrenniale right up to his death, always achieving great success with collectors and being asked to execute replicas of his most popular subjects.