Die drei Philosophen

Giorgione finished this in Venice around 1508 or 1509, near the very end of his short life, and almost the moment it was done people began arguing about what it means. A Venetian named Marcantonio Michiel saw it in a private house a few years later and simply called it three philosophers, one young, one in middle age, one old, gathered by the mouth of a dark cave at dusk. Since then they have been read as three ages of man, as astronomers, as the three Magi waiting for the star, as figures standing outside Plato's cave. Giorgione gives no caption and no clear story. X-rays show he changed his mind as he worked. The oldest man on the right first wore an elaborate headdress topped with a solar disk, which the painter then covered over with a plain hood. The young seated figure holds a set square and compass and looks toward the shadowed rock the others ignore.