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Giorgione's Tempest, Studiolo Culture, and the Renaissance Lucretius*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Stephen J. Campbell*
Affiliation:
The Johns Hopkins University

Abstract

The invention of Giorgione's much-interpreted painting known as The Tempest can be explained with reference to the De rerum natura of Lucretius. Lucretius provides the essential connection between the main elements of the painting: a male 'wanderer,' a lightning bolt, broken columns, a naked, nursing female, and a landscape rendered according to momentary, fleeting appearances. The invention of the painting also responds to the way Lucretius was read around 1500, to the specific interests of the poet's Renaissance readers and imitators, and to forms of self-cultivation associated with the ownership of a studiolo.

Type
Studies
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2003

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Jaynie Anderson, Shane Butler, and Ann Kuttner for their invaluable help with this project.

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