Portrait d’un jeune homme

Giorgione is one of the great mysteries of Venetian painting. He died young, around 1510, probably in an outbreak of plague, and left only a handful of pictures, several of them still argued over. This young man is one of the puzzles. For a long time he was identified as a real person, the poet and lawyer Antonio Broccardo, on the strength of an inscription on the ledge in front of him, but that inscription turned out to be a later forgery, so his name is lost again. He brings one hand to his chest in a quiet, inward gesture, his expression somewhere between thoughtful and sad. On the parapet below are small emblems, among them a three-faced head standing for prudence, wreathed in a garland. Even the painter is uncertain. Some scholars give the picture to Giorgione's colleague Giovanni Cariani instead.