How does Giorgione's The Tempest exemplify the artist's important contribution to Venetian painting during the High Renaissance? Describe and analyze the style and iconography of the painting to explain your answers.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The ideal answer should include:
1. Giorgione introduced new, enigmatic pastoral themes, known as poesie, to his art that were inspired by the contemporary literary revival of ancient pastoral poetry.
2. At the right, a nude woman sits on the ground with a white cloth over her shoulders, but her nudity seems maternal and sensual rather than heroic and biblical.
3. Between the woman and the man, Giorgione depicts a spring, a lake, and substantial houses and a bolt of lightning splits the darkening sky.
4. In The Tempest, Giorgione focuses on the landscape and the disruptive elements of nature as much as on the figures; this attention to the natural world in landscape painting becomes an important theme in sixteenth-century art.