My Daily Art Display for today is entitled Three Philosophers and was painted in 1509 by Giorgione, one year before his death. Little is known about the artist’s early life but Giorgio da Castelfranco, known as Giorgione, was born in Castelfranco, in the province of Venetia in 1477 and by 1500 had moved to the city of Venice. There he studied under the great Bellini. Sadly his life was cut short at the young age of 33 by the plague which raged through the land in 1510. Less than a dozen of his paintings remain in existence and two of them hang in the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna.
Today’s painting has left art historians in a quandary on how to interpret this work of art. The picture shows three philosophers – one old, one middle-aged and one young. The young man is looking at the cave at the left of the scene and could be measuring and noting down the features of the entrance. Some postulate it is about three stages of man’s life viz., the young, the middle aged and the old. Others say it concerns three different philosophical schools of thought; the young man representing the Renaissance, the man, maybe a Muslim, wearing a turban, the Muslim expansion age and the old man, the Middle Ages. Yet others believe the three figures represent the three Magi, witnessing the first appearance of the star. The figures seem to be astronomers or at least versed in interpreting the movement of the heavenly bodies, as confirmed by the charts and instruments held by the young man and the bearded old man. The reason for this enigma is that the painting was made to order for an exclusive patron and the theme of it was only known to him, his friends and the painter. This genre of the painting in which the landscape and the human figures attain the same importance was unusual in Giorgione’s work. Giorgione’s painting methods for this work concentrated on colour effect. The warm and delicately shaded colours he used over large areas of the canvas together with the way in which he allows one hue flow into another similar one creates an illusion of airiness and atmosphere.
Have you a favourite painting which you would like to see on My Daily Art Display?
If so, let me know and tell me why it is a favourite of yours and I will include it in a future offering.
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