Il giudizio di Salomone

This small panel comes from right at the start of Giorgione's career in Venice, around 1500, not long after he left Bellini's workshop. It shows the old Bible test of wisdom. Two women claim the same baby, and King Solomon offers to cut the child in two, knowing the true mother will give it up rather than see it die. But notice how little of the picture is actually the trial. The figures are pushed small into the foreground while a wide, soft landscape opens up behind them, which is the thing Giorgione cared about and the thing that would make him famous. Scholars still argue over this one, some doubting his hand entirely or seeing a helper at work, because so little about his short life is documented. It hangs in the Uffizi in Florence.