La Tempête

Giorgione painted this in Venice around 1506 to 1508, and almost nothing about it has ever been explained. On one bank stands a young man, dressed like a soldier, leaning on a staff. On the other side a nearly naked woman sits nursing a baby, looking out at us. Between them a river, a broken pair of columns, a little town, and a bolt of lightning splitting a green-black sky. People have called it a scene from mythology, a hidden holy family, an allegory, and no reading has ever stuck, which is a large part of why it fascinates. The strangest evidence for how loosely Giorgione worked came in 1939, when the canvas was X-rayed. Underneath the standing man there had originally been a second nude woman bathing, which Giorgione simply painted over and replaced. In other words he seems to have improvised the whole subject as he went, without a fixed story in mind. That was unusual for the time, and it fits what little we know of him. He died young, probably of plague around 1510, leaving only a handful of pictures and no clear answers.