Giorgione

Renaissance innovator Giorgione (c. 1477-1510) transformed Venetian painting through his poetic mood and revolutionary treatment of landscape. Born Giorgio Barbarelli in Castelfranco Veneto, he trained in Giovanni Bellini's workshop alongside the young Titian. Together they founded the Venetian school's emphasis on color and atmosphere over the linear clarity favored in Florence and Rome.

Giorgione died of plague at around 33, leaving only a handful of works certainly by his hand. The Tempest (c. 1505) remains art history's most enigmatic masterpiece, its meaning debated for centuries. His Sleeping Venus established the reclining nude as a subject, directly inspiring Titian's Venus of Urbino and, centuries later, Manet's Olympia. The Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice displays The Tempest, while Sleeping Venus hangs at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden. The Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna holds The Three Philosophers, and the Hermitage displays his Judith.