Giorgione
1477 - 1510
Italian painter, one of the main artists of the Venetian high renaissance. He was born as Giorgio Barbarelli in the town of Castelfranco, in the Veneto region.
In Venice Giorgione was an apprentice of Giovanni Bellini, together with Titian. By 1500 he was back in Castelfranco, where he made fresco's and an altarpiece. In 1505 he returned to Venice, where he died of the plague in 1510.
Much of his work is lost, especially his fresco's. The remaining paintings show creativity, imaginative power, a colourful palette, and intense depth.
Wikipedia on his legacy: "Giorgione never subordinated line and colour to architecture, nor an artistic effect to a sentimental presentation. He was the first to paint landscapes with figures, the first to paint genre — movable pictures in their own frames with no devotional, allegorical, or historical purpose — and the first whose colours possessed that ardent, glowing, and melting intensity which was so soon to typify the work of all the Venetian School."
The portrait is probably a self-portrait, made after 1500.
art