Already master of his peculiar style, Giorgione painted this work of art, that many critics intended, unsuccessfully, to give it a symbolical and misterious meaning. Does it represent the infancy of Paris? Or the nymph that nurses Epaphus, under the look of Mercury? Or the recovery of Moses? Or it perhaps symbolizes the illegitimate birth of the painter himself? The majority of critics has solved the puzzle simply calling it "The Gypsy and the Soldier", or better, "Tempest", since in reality the theme is nature and the two persons are only secondary elements. They are simply details placed just for need in the composition, just to fill empty areas and to balance parts. In fact the X-rays have revealed that, in a first moment, instead of the soldier, Giorgione had painted another naked woman, she sat, on the opposite shore of the stream. The color is rich and deep, nature appears as spontaneous and freely born, in an open pantheism. Tempestuous sky, suddenly ploughed from lightning, and the stream, the ruins of constructions, some towers and the houses of the second level, all make you think of the time that passes, all things changed, disappeared, slowly but inexorably like the waters of the stream, like life itself. This is perhaps the only symbolic meaning, if there is one. But the principal meaning is the contemplation and exaltation of nature itself and for itself, in a play of different instruments and elements, that Giorgione perceives, listens and translates into a personal and pictorical aesthetic vision.

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