O Flautista

In the Venice of about 1508 a new kind of picture was catching on: small, close-up figures made for a private room rather than a church or a council hall, to be enjoyed like a piece of music or a poem. This flute player, turned so we catch him from the side with his head swung back toward us, is one of them, and it has carried Giorgione's name for centuries. That name is not settled. The Borghese has listed the panel under Giovanni Bellini and under lesser Venetian hands, and scholars still argue whether it is Giorgione himself or a close follower painting in his manner. What almost no one disputes is the mood, the soft, unhurried Venetian handling Giorgione made fashionable before plague killed him around 1510, still in his early thirties. It hangs as the companion to a second panel, a singer caught mid-song.