Der leidenschaftliche Sänger

Giorgione died young in 1510, probably of the plague then sweeping Venice, and he left so few certain paintings that almost anything bearing his name comes with an argument attached. This passionate singer, caught mid-song with his lips parted, is one of those arguments. A Roman writer named Manilli listed it as a Giorgione in 1650, and it has carried that name ever since. But the handling does not quite match the master's secure work, and scholars have wondered whether a pupil finished it, or whether a later painter imitated his manner altogether. In the same gallery hangs its pendant, a young man playing a flute, catalogued with exactly the same uncertainty.