Art Escapes experience.

Elusive and sublime, Giorgione is one of the principal figures in the history of Italian art. To commemorate the 500 years since the death of its most illustrious citizen, Castelfranco Veneto dedicates a large exhibition to Giorgione, in the town's new Giorgione House Museum, next to the cathedral. This museum space was created using the rooms of the Casa Marta-Pellizzari, where the artist realized his only fresco: the Frieze of the Liberal and Mechanical Arts, a work which synthesizes the alchemic philosophy of the early Renaissance.

Even today, the life of Giorgione is shrouded in mystery; only a few biographical notes testify to his existence and critics have attributed with certainty only a handful of paintings to the artist. And yet, despite dying of the plague in 1510, when he was little more than 30 years old, Giorgione managed to have a profound influence on numerous artists and Renaissance painting in general. For this reason, in addition to the ten canvases by the artist on loan from major international museums, the exhibition includes works by painters such as Giovanni Bellini, Perugino, Sebastiano dal Piombo, Cima da Coneglliano, and Albrecht Dürer, all of whom, like Giorgione, contributed to the cultural ferment of the early 16th century in the areas of Venetian influence.

Using multimedia tools and inspired staging, the museum takes visitors on a journey back in time, to the period in which Giorgione lived and worked. In this setting, Giorgione's The Tempest, The Sunset and Madonna and Child from the Hermitage, emerge as if by magic: washed with a radiant light which reveals the beauty of the landscapes used by the artist as backdrops in his works. Similar landscapes can still be seen today, in certain stretches of the Marca Trevigiana, in the Colli di Prosecco, and in the countryside around the cities of Asolo and Conegliano.

The exhibition continues beyond the walls of the museum, in the Cathedral's Costanzo Chapel, where Giorgione's recently restored Madonna and Child between St. Francis and St Nicasius is, once more, on display.