These three learned men differ in age, outlook, and dress. But do they represent religions, eras, or philosophies?
Giorgione, Three Philosophers, c. 1506, oil on canvas, 125.5 x 146.2 cm (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna)
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Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:12] We’re in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, looking at Giorgione’s “The Three Philosophers.” But that title is provisional because we have no idea what this painting is about.
Dr. Beth Harris: [0:16] These figures clearly represent something. They’re each so very distinct in their gestures, and the way that they look, and how they’re dressed, and what they hold that there must be a key, but we don’t know what it is.
Dr. Zucker: [0:32] Let’s take a look at what Giorgione is offering us and see if we can’t figure this out at least a little bit. Their faces are beautifully illuminated by that light just before dusk when the sun is low in the sky. The figure seated, the youngest of the three, is wearing this green and brilliant white. He holds in his hand a compass at a right angle.
[0:49] The standing figure next to him, [in] red and blue, wearing a turban, seems to be gesturing over to the oldest figure on the extreme right side, who is himself dressed in these rich golds. He holds a compass in his left hand and a drawing in his right.
Dr. Harris: [1:11] That drawing seems to have on it a sun, perhaps a moon, some geometric diagrams. Perhaps he’s an ancient philosopher or a mathematician.
Dr. Zucker: [0:00] This is esoteric knowledge. It is knowledge that perhaps has been lost to us.
Dr. Harris: [1:26] He’s the oldest of the three figures. He seems to look, if anything, inward. The figure next to him, by by contrast, looks down.
Dr. Zucker: [1:32] That’s the standing man in middle age.
Dr. Harris: [0:00] And then the youngest figure seems to look up.
Dr. Zucker: [0:00] But look at what he’s looking at.
Dr. Harris: [1:38] Into the darkness, into this cave form.
Dr. Zucker: [1:41] He seems to be trying to measure not only the physical world around him –in contrast to the old man on the right, who seems to be measuring the cosmos in some way — he seems to be trying to understand and draw out something factual, something actual, from a space that he can’t really see, or at least that we can’t really see.
Dr. Harris: [2:00] It’s very complicated. The most recent theory matches what we’re describing ourselves as we stand and look at it, which is that the figure on the left represents the era that Giorgione lived in, of this new humanist interest in the world around us.
[2:20] That the figure in the center, who looks like he’s wearing foreign clothing, may represent the Islamic world and the way that they preserved ancient Greek and Roman knowledge. The figure on the far right may represent that philosophy of ancient Greece and Rome.
Dr. Zucker: [2:31] Other competing theories take these figures as the three great monotheistic religions: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.
Dr. Harris: [2:39] Another theory is that they represent three specific philosophers. We really don’t know. We know that Giorgione did work for aristocratic patrons in Venice. They seem to have preferred a new type of subject, and often we can’t determine what those were. They’re not the standard Christian subjects.
Dr. Zucker: [3:00] Right. They’re not enacting a narrative. They’re not enacting a biblical story. They’re not representations of mythic figures. In a sense, they seem to be referencing a set of ideas, and that is more elusive, and thus it’s lost to us.
Dr. Harris: [3:15] Even though we can’t determine the specific meaning, we can still really enjoy the painting.
Dr. Zucker: [3:17] The composition is so interesting, because they are pushed over to the right. They occupy less than half the canvas, but they’re perfectly balanced by the darkness, the mass of the cave on the left.
Dr. Harris: [0:00] Then, between those groups, a really beautiful landscape that, to me, looks very Venetian.
Dr. Zucker: [3:37] Look at that atmospheric perspective as we move back. The hillside becomes bluer and bluer, and then that’s played against the golden light of that setting sun.
Dr. Harris: [3:46] That golden light is the environment for all of the figures. That’s one of the wonderful things about Giorgione and Venetian painting is that there’s a real sense of atmosphere, of time of day, of a soft glowing light that envelops the landscape and that also envelops the figures.
Dr. Zucker: [3:58] It creates a mood for the entire painting, which is soft and contemplative, and does underscore the idea that something profound is taking place.
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