Giorgione, also called Giorgio Barbarelli or Giorgio del Castelfranco c.1478-1511
Italian painter

Born near Castelfranco, he probably studied at Venice under Giovanni Bellini, and soon developed a freer and larger manner, characterized by intense poetic feeling and richness of colouring. Several early portraits by him have disappeared, but an Enthroned Madonna is an altarpiece at Castelfranco. In Venice he was extensively employed in fresco painting, but fragments in the Fondaco de'Tedeschi are all that now remain of this work. The Tempest at Venice is attributed to him, while The Family of Giorgione in Venice, The Three Philosophers in Vienna and the Sleeping Venus in the Dresden Gallery are genuine. Many of his pictures, such as the Sleeping Venus and The Three Philosophers, were completed by other painters, including Titian. Giorgione was a great innovator; he created the small intimate easel picture with a new treatment of figures in landscape, aimed at private rather than public collections, and his work marks a turning point in Venetian painting. He was the first great Romantic artist.