The Italian painter Giorgione (1477-1510) was one of the first masters of the Venetian High Renaissance. His works are notable for their poetic qualities.

Although the career of Giorgione occupies a very short period of time, his creation of mood through color, light, and atmosphere, giving a dreamlike character to his paintings, established a style of poetic romanticism that influenced numerous Venetian contemporaries, particularly Titian and Palma Vecchio, but also secondary masters such as Cariani, Vincenzo Catena, and II Romanino. Because of the paucity of documents and of signed pictures by these masters, many attributions are difficult to establish, and various critics differ radically in assigning works to Giorgione himself and to the so-called Giorgionesque painters who followed him.

The painter called Giorgione, whose name was Giorgio (Zorzi) da Castelfranco, was born in the town of Castelfranco near Venice in 1477. No information exists as to his family or...