In 1506, George said Zorzi Giorgione brought to the world one of the greatest masterpieces of art of his century: "The Tempest", which is also one of the most enigmatic paintings of the Renaissance. The painting depicts a woman nursing her baby in a clearing near some ruins. At the scene assisting an Lansquenet. In the background a bridge, a river, a village and above all, to justify the title, a gloomy sky, pierced by a thunderbolt. Various interpretations, few answers. And the gaze of the woman portrayed in silence looking exegetical efforts of observers. The penultimate work of William Shakespeare (as well as one that marked his farewell to the stage), also not without a certain mystique and elusive, was titled "The Tempest", the storm (story of the sinking of Alun nobles on an island after a hurricane). Not that this has a direct relationship with the painting by Giorgione ... but it is interesting to create this symbolic parallelism between the legacy of two great Renaissance masters, around a theme which in itself is not without its intense charm, and in the sixteenth century seems to anticipate the subjects dear romantic art: the mystery of nature, the strength of the elements, the feeling melancholy.
Since ancient times man appears shocked, almost spiritually shaken by the event of a storm. Anxiety on the "windows of heaven" that seem to open, awe for the water rushes with such force, the astonished vision of lightning that breaks the heart of the clouds, lighting up the gray sky, the deep disturbance given by the shocking power of the thunder with his thunder rumbles as divine wrath . The storm, which plays a major role in the myths of many cultures (even as a flood) is immediately perceived as a peremptory theophany, emergence of the voice of the gods thus expressing their will to men: the flashes become the weapons of Zeus, whose name means precisely, originally, "Light of Heaven." With time, however, though not universally, the storms lose their oracular connotation of "divine punishment" or intervention of the gods in human affairs. Especially after the Enlightenment centuries, thanks to a renewed look at science on the nature, time ceases to be expressed in a religious light, and fall within the category of natural laws. But, in parallel with this newfound rationality in the approach to meteorology, certainly when compared to the sacrosanct superstition but also simplistic when you consider that nature is also first and foremost magical feeling, then, is the art to maintain the charm of the mysterious storm. Storm that is given by air currents, electrical reactions and physical factors, but also has the keys of the human imagination, that faced with the fury of the elements is disarmed, admired, upset, regenerated.
The storm marks a crucial event of nature with the lightning, blue flame across the sky and hits the ground with force, amid an avalanche of water that comes gushing over the world, that's created the perfect synthesis of the four elements : earth, water, air, and fire them pierces the early Enlightenment ... It is perhaps this impressive elements to mingle together and have been higher for the artistic imagination. And that lovely disturbance that seemed to occur every time you land, water, air and fire collided, perhaps was not entirely alien to a form of natural magic: if you think that, according to some, the very thunder that shook the primordial world, could have led to the emergence of the earliest forms of organic life. Chemical randomness or divine design, this is another matter ...
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