Giorgione: Portrait of a Young Man (Giustiniani Portrait) 149?
Every time I look at a Renaissance portrait I wonder how the sitter would look today. Giorgione’s young man would perfectly fit into a Seattle grunge rock band after a clothes change. I ponder over the suddenness of our existence; this young man could have been born in the twentieth century and I could have lived in the Renaissance era. I would swap for sure.
The young Venetian master, Giorgione, only left about six or seven works of his for us: the others were destroyed, disappeared, or their creator was impossible to define precisely. Six or seven! Even in Giorgione’s lifetime his works were often mistaken for Tiziano’s works. Giorgione lived so short a life, who knows how many paintings he would have done if the epidemic spared him.
I hope the plague avoided the young man on the painting at least. He is so young, good-looking, and even his moustache just sprouted. Giorgione’s soft brushstrokes left his figure very much alive. I almost expect him to shout the song “Come as you are”, but he won’t.
If I think about it, I would rather not swap with the young man because I would not know Van Gogh or the Impressionists, and the pestilence would eventually kill me anyway.
