What is mysterious about Giorgione's Tempest (Fig. 15.27)? In your answer refer to the discussion in the MyArtsLab CloserLook material on the painting

What will be an ideal response?

The Tempest seems to lack a coherent subject or sensibility. Though it capitalizes on precise detail and scientific perspective, the composition is balanced, and the colors brilliant. But there is no theme depicted. In Tempest, it appears as though the subject matter is somewhat arbitrary, given the presence of columns, a bridge, and lightening.

Art historians and critics have identified various literary sources for the subject of the painting but all interpretations remains speculative. The British writer Walter Pater regarded Giorgione as the inventor of genre painting: paintings which are neither devotional nor are intended to convey any historical or allegorical teaching.

The nudity of the woman in the right foreground, nursing an infant, suggests that she is a bather; though the figure of a woman and child in the Italian Renaissance would have also suggested Marian imagery.