The second event of moment to which allusion may here be made was the great conflagration in the year 1504, when the Exchange of the German Merchants was burnt.  This building, known as the Fondaco de’ Tedeschi, occupying one of the finest sites on the Grand Canal, was rebuilt by order of the Signoria, and Giorgione received the commission to decorate the facade with frescoes.  The work was completed by 1508, and became the most celebrated of all the artist’s creations.  The Fondaco still stands to-day, but, alas! a crimson stain high up on the wall is all that remains to us of these great frescoes, which were already in decay when Vasari visited Venice in 1541.

Other work of the kind—­all long since perished—­Giorgione undertook with success.  The Soranzo Palace, the Palace of Andrea Loredano, the Casa Flangini, and elsewhere, were frescoed with various devices, or ornamented with monochrome friezes.

We know nothing of Giorgione’s home life; he does not appear to have married, or to have left descendants.  Vasari speaks of “his many friends whom he delighted by his admirable performance in music,” and his death caused “extreme grief to his many friends to whom he was endeared by his excellent qualities.”  He enjoyed prosperity and good health, and was called Giorgione “as well from the character of his person as for the exaltation of his mind."[8]

He died of plague in the early winter of 1510, and was probably buried with other victims on the island of Poveglia, off Venice, where the lazar-house was situated.[9] The tradition that his bones were removed in 1638 and buried at Castelfranco in the family vault of the Barbarelli is devoid of foundation, and was invented to round off the story of his supposed connection with the family.[10]

NOTES: 

[1] See Appendix, where the documents are quoted in full.

[2] Vasari gives 1478 (1477 in his first edition) and 1511 as the years of his birth and death.  Crowe and Cavalcaselle, and Dr. Bode prefer to say “before 1477,” a supposition which would make his precocity less phenomenal, and help to explain some chronological difficulties (see p. 66).

[3] Zorzon da Castelfranco.  La sua origine, la sua morte e tomba, by Dr. Georg Gronau.  Venice, 1894.

[4] Vide Repertorium fuer Kunstwissenschaft, xix. 2, p. 166. [Dr. Gronau.]

[5] It would seem, therefore, desirable to efface the name of Barbarelli from the catalogues.  The National Gallery, for example, registers Giorgione’s work under this name.

[6] The translation given is that of Blashfield and Hopkins’s edition.  Bell, 1897.

[7] M. Muentz adduces strong arguments in favour of this view (La fin de la Renaissance, p. 600).

[8] The name “Giorgione” signifies “Big George.”  But it seems to have been also his father’s name.

[9] This visitation claimed no less than 20,000 victims.