Giorgione

1477-1510

European Artist

Giorgione was born in Castelfranco, northwest of Venice, Italy. Little is known about his childhood and artistic training, but he was probably raised in Venice. Early in his career he may have studied with Giovanni Bellini, a prominent member of the first family of Venetian painters. In the first decade of the sixteenth century Giorgione worked for a time with Titian, who would go on to become the most famous Venetian painter in history. At the height of his successful career, Giorgione died, probably of the plague, in 1510. Some works left unfinished at his death were completed by Titian and Sebastiano del Piombo. Giorgione's paintings reveal the artist's intense observation of nature, and his intuitive understanding of color relationships. His figures are so skillfully created in terms of light, shade and atmosphere that they seem almost to breathe.