San Giovanni Crisostomo Altarpiece

Around 1510 Venetian painting was in flux. Giorgione, the young genius who had reshaped it, died of plague that year, leaving his followers to carry on his soft, atmospheric manner. One of them, still in his twenties, painted this altarpiece for the church it still hangs in, San Giovanni Grisostomo. Saint John Chrysostom sits reading at a desk while saints gather around him, and Mary Magdalene turns to meet your eye. So close was it to Giorgione's manner that Vasari, writing his famous Lives decades later, first credited the picture to Giorgione himself, then corrected it in a later edition to the real author, Sebastiano. Soon after finishing it Sebastiano left for Rome, drawn into the orbit of Michelangelo, and never worked in Venice again.