Giorgione di Castelfranco
La tempesta

In autumn, I have always explored Treviso by slowly walking through its streets, where footsteps echoing on the cobblestones evoke the rhythm of a pleasant sound, like the one felt during an open-air walk, with the senses straining to remember everything to then fill the mind with beautiful images and pleasant smells. And with each step at the corners of intersections, squares, and plazas, with the discovery of new spaces, the landscape also changes, sometimes evoking a journey back in time, where one proceeds walking and barely brushing the warm and sweet-colored stones with one's eyes, to suddenly encounter the gurgling of water along grassy banks exposed to the air and light of a cool autumn morning.

So, if I think of a piece of music that can be associated with my autumnal Treviso, it is "Adagio for Strings Op. 11" by American composer Samuel Barber.

In summer, however, when the stones reflect the sweating of the hot daytime light, to find some coolness, one goes biking along the banks of the Sile, following the routes of the towpaths of the Restera. Cycling through the shady and green tunnels of the embankments, which alternate with the dazzling and bright surfaces of the dusty towpaths, is like tuning into the magic of this nature, which the boundless toil of man has influenced with his work and passed down to his children.

Then in the evening, when all the noises die down, one strolls in the cool listening to the rustling of reeds on the riverbanks, until the air is tinged with the dusky shadow of the first night.

Following the paths along the river, the encounter with the tranquility of these water waves, so green they seem to color even the skies, recalls the notes of the Concerto in E Major Op. 8 "The Four Seasons" by Antonio Vivaldi.

I also remember Treviso like this: listening to Vivaldi's music and looking at an equally famous work of art like "The Tempest" by Giorgione from Castelfranco, executed in 1505-06 in Venice by one of the most enigmatic artists of the sixteenth century who died at only 32 years old.

It is not strange to connect Venice and Treviso because both share many things that we, often distracted by a thousand tasks and thoughts, struggle to remember or recognize: like the pleasure of knowing how to combine the quality of each single image into a unique and harmonious whole of nature and human work.

Treviso and Venice are brought together by the water that generates life and by the skillful work of man that unites everything needed for everyday life with what is beautiful and harmonious. For this reason, I love Treviso as I do Venice, and for this reason, it comes naturally to link music to the images of art.

In "The Tempest" by Giorgione, the gaze is lost and channeled following the curves of a stream with placid and transparent water whose reflections, green-blue, are lost in the light saturated with vapors of the impending storm. In the distance, a light wooden bridge without railings connects a path, wide and flattened like a towpath, to the buildings of a flourishing town overlooking the water.

And there it is, a lightning bolt darting in the sky, tearing through rain-laden clouds and drawing our attention like a cold magnet of light: it is this lightning that dominates the entire work and gives it a modern meaning of phenomenon in action.

Then our gaze returns to the tranquility of the foreground, framed by a dense undergrowth and the foliage of two trees with tall, slender trunks, while ancient classical architectures render this scene strange and mysterious, and it is precisely in this strange pastoral landscape that two figures at the extreme ends seem to further complicate the meaning of the work.

A young man, leaning on a long stick and in a relaxed position, looks towards the other bank.

On the opposite side, lying in the mossy scent of the embankment, a naked woman nurses and looks towards us, drawing us definitively and mysteriously into the painting's orbit, only to then return us to observing the flow of water in the stream, up to the sharp flash of lightning among the clouds.

It then becomes clear that the two figures at the extreme ends of the scene, precisely because they are marginal, exalt the centrality of a nature harmoniously embellished by ancient and modern architecture, as a testimony to human intelligence and knowledge: just like in Venice and Treviso.

The Tempest is a small oil and tempera canvas measuring 83 x 73 cm. preserved at the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice. Among this artist's works, it is certainly the most famous, which will serve as an example for artists of every era.