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Europe 1300 - 1800
Course: Europe 1300 - 1800 > Unit 4
Lesson 9: Venice- Greek painters in renaissance Venice
- The Renaissance Synagogues of Venice
- Giorgione, The Tempest
- Giorgione, The Tempest
- Giorgione, Three Philosophers
- Giorgione, the Adoration of the Shepherds
- Bellini and Titian, the Feast of the Gods
- Titian, Pastoral Concert
- Titian, Noli me Tangere
- Titian, Assumption of the Virgin
- Titian, Madonna of the Pesaro Family
- Titian, Bacchus and Ariadne
- Titian, Isabella d’Este (Isabella in Black)
- Titian, two portraits of Pietro Aretino
- Titian, Venus of Urbino
- Titian, Venus of Urbino
- Titian's Venus of Urbino
- Titian, Christ Crowned with Thorns
- Titian, Pieta
- Correggio, Jupiter and Io
- Correggio, Assumption of the Virgin
- Veronese, The Family of Darius Before Alexander
- Veronese, the Dream of Saint Helena
- Paolo Veronese. Feast in the House of Levi
- Transcript of the trial of Veronese
- Tintoretto, the Miracle of the Slave
- Tintoretto, The Finding of the Body of Saint Mark
- Tintoretto, the Origin of the Milky Way
- Tintoretto, Last Supper
- Palladio, La Rotonda
- Palladio, Teatro Olimpico
- The Renaissance in Venice in the 1500s
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Giorgione, Three Philosophers
Giorgione, Three Philosophers, c. 1506 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris & Dr. Steven Zucker. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- Given what the bearded man is holding (), might he be an astronomer, or a proto-astronomer? Who can be considered the first astronomer? 1:20(11 votes)
- Ptolemy (c. AD 90 – c. AD 168) was a Roman in Egypt whose written works influenced astronomers in the Middle Ages. Ptolemy is associated with the (false) belief of the Earth as the centre of the Solar System, known as Ptolemaic system.
There were certainly many accomplishment astronomers in ancient cultures who's names and works are mostly lost however. For example, monuments such as Stonehenge as well as the Egyptian pyramids are aligned with celestial events and stars.(15 votes)
- At around, you discuss the background. As the eye goes farther and farther into the background, it seems bluer and hazier to me. Is it fair to say that this is a sfumato technique from Leonardo's influence? Didn't Leonardo used to do backgrounds like this? 3:50(4 votes)
- From the author:Giorgione was likely influenced by Leonardo, yes. But this is also just atmospheric perspective - though applied in a particularly Venetian way to a particular time of day and quality of light.(7 votes)
- The speculation about what these men represent is interesting, and strangely i had a different feeling about it. The young man is holding a right angle and a compass the tools of a master builder, while the clothes of the man in the middle looks expensive and from a far away place, while the old man holds a piece of paper or parchment with knowledge. So i was thinking about them maybe representing an artisan a merchant and a philospher or wise man.
I think each of these groups could be valued in a republic like venice, or is my thinking off here?(4 votes) - 2.05 Could it be the different ages of man?(3 votes)
- Yes, ages or dispensations of ideas, the Greek era, the Islamic era, then the European era.(1 vote)
- Is the youngest holding a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballastella so that he can find the height of things using the Pythagorean theorem?(2 votes)
- See, It is a compass and a right angle or "square". 0:47(1 vote)
- When I watched this video, it actually came to mind that maybe these three figures actually represent the same man at different times of his life. Being that at a young age he has a compass and right angle, and in the final stage of life, he has an idea sketched on paper, it made me think of his journey in discovering in life. We change in life. We come across ideas. We ponder. We discover. We look back and down and forward while we ponder. Probably zero validity to this, but it just took my mind to a totally different place...(2 votes)
- Given that so much of painting had biblical significance, would it not be reasonable to assume that this is another painting of the three wise men (aka. magi, kings)?(2 votes)
- I doubt it. The renaissance in Northern Italy was secularizing, and subjects other than things that could hang in churches were becoming more and more common. Besides, the Magi (how ever many or few of them there may have been) carried gold, frankincense and myrrh. I saw no myrrh in anyone's hand in the picture.(1 vote)
- Maybe he's presenting the same person over time ?(2 votes)
- Since Socrates was a free thinker and never wrote any thing down but rather was a spoken thinker, how do we know if Plato's interpretation of his mentor was accurate and did not lose the original intend verbal notions and ideas of Socrates when written by Plato ?(1 vote)
- Perhaps it is safe to assume that Plato was not attempting an accurate representation, but rather, his take on his experience of Socrates, as he remembered him, with his own rhetorical style, expressing the spirit of Socrates.(1 vote)
- If Giorgione's painting is so elusive and even enigmatic, can he be consider a mannerist? or at least a precursor of them?(1 vote)
- From the author:Interesting question. Venice is always a little tricky. Styles that originate in Florence and Rome often sit uneasily in Venice but there is a thread worth thinking about in Giorgione's work that does seem to forecast the court art of the following decades.(1 vote)
Video transcript
(piano playing) Steven: We're in the
Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna looking at Giorgione's
The Three Philosophers. But that title is provisional
because we really have no idea what this painting is about. Beth: These figures clearly
represent something. They're each so very distinct in their
gestures and the way that they look and how they're dressed and what
they hold, that there must be a key. But we don't know what it is. Steven: So let's take a look at
what Giorgione is offering us and see if we can't figure
this out at least a little bit. Their faces are beautifully illuminated
by that light just before dusk, when the sun is low in the sky. But the figure seated,
the youngest of the three, is wearing this green and brilliant white. He holds in his hand a
compass and a right angle. The standing figure next to him,
red and blue wearing a turban, seems to be gesturing over to the
oldest figure on the extreme right side, who is himself dressed
in these rich golds. He holds a compass in his left
hand and a drawing in his right. Beth: And that drawing seems to
have on it a sun, perhaps a moon, some geometric diagrams so perhaps he is
a ancient philosopher or mathematician. Steven: So this is esoteric knowledge. It is knowledge that
perhaps has been lost to us. Beth: And he's the oldest of the
three figures and he seems to look, if anything, inward. The figure next to him,
by contrast, looks down. Steven: That's the
standing man in middle age. Beth: And then the youngest
figure seems to look up. Steven: But look what he's looking at. Beth: Into the darkness,
into this cave form. Steven: He seems to be trying to measure
not only the physical world around him, in contrast to the old man on the
right who seems to be measuring the cosmos in some way, but he
seems to be trying to understand and draw out something
factual, something actual, from a space that he can't really see
or at least that we can't really see. Beth: It's very complicated
and the most recent theory matches what we're describing
ourselves as we stand and look at it, which is that the figure on the left
represents the era that Giorgione lived in of this new humanist interest
in the world around us. That the figure in the center who looks
like he's wearing foreign clothing may represent the Islamic world
and the way that they preserved ancient Greek and Roman knowledge,
and the figure on the far right may represent that philosophy
of ancient Greece and Rome. Steven: Other competing
theories take these figures as the three great monotheistic religions:
Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Beth: Another theory is that they
represent three specific philosophers, we really don't know. We know that Giorgione did work
for aristocratic patrons in Venice and they seemed to have
preferred a new type of subject and often we really can't
determine what those were. They're not the standard
Christian subjects. Steven: Well right, they're
not enacting a narrative. They're not enacting a biblical
story, they're not representations of mythic figures. In a sense they seem to be
referencing a set of ideas and that is more elusive
and thus it's lost to us. Beth: So even though we can't
determine the specific meaning we can still really enjoy the painting. Steven: The composition is so
interesting because they are pushed over to the right, they occupy
less than half the canvas. But they're perfectly
balanced by the darkness, the mass of the cave on the left. Beth: And then between those
groups a really beautiful landscape that, to me, looks very Venetian. Steven: Well look at that atmospheric
perspective as we move back. The hillside becomes bluer and
bluer and then that's played against the golden light of that setting sun. Beth: And that golden light is the
environment for all of the figures. That's one of the wonderful things
about Giorgione and Venetian painting is that there's a real sense
of atmosphere, of time of day, of a soft glowing light
that envelops the landscape and that also envelops the figures. Steven: It creates a mood
for the entire painting which is soft and contemplative
and really does underscore the idea that something
profound is taking place. (piano playing)