Giorgione's Tempest at the Academy Galleries of Venice

Among the various works exhibited in the Academy Galleries there is one that can be considered the most enigmatic painting of the entire Italian Renaissance painting, ‘The Tempest' by Giorgione.

Despite many studies, no one knows for sure what it represents…

In a landscape - one of the most beautiful ever painted - a young man leaning on a stick and a nearly naked woman breast-feeding a baby are represented while a storm is looming in the sky and in the background there is a glimpse of a city, probably Padua.

Among the various interpretative hypotheses we can mention: Adam and Eve expelled from Paradise, the finding of Moses, the allegories of Charity and Fortitude, the birth of Parid, a representation related to alchemy, a metaphor for the conquest of the city of Padua during the War of Cambrai, the capture of Chioggia and many others.

And if it were just a work of art without a subject and only a landscape with two men and a storm coming?