Which painting by Giorgione, created around 1508, is known as The Tempest?

The Tempest is the painting by Giorgione created around 1508. It shows a woman with a baby on one side of a landscape and a standing man on the other, while lightning illuminates a stormy sky behind them.

The work is famous because its subject has never been identified with certainty. Proposed interpretations have included a biblical scene, an allegory, and a symbolic image of nature, but no single explanation has achieved universal agreement. This ambiguity makes the painting unusual even within the imaginative world of Venetian Renaissance art.

Giorgione’s atmospheric handling of landscape and color strongly influenced Venetian painting. The Tempest is held in the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice. It is often confused with Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus, which was completed after his death, likely with intervention by Titian, but the two paintings have different compositions and themes.