"The Giovanelli Figures," or "The Stormy Landscape, with the Soldier and
the Gipsy," as the picture has been commonly called since the days of
the Anonimo, who so described it in 1530, is totally unlike anything
that Venetian art of the pre-Giorgionesque era has to show. The painted
myth is a new departure, the creation of Giorgione's own brain, and as
such, is treated in a wholly unconventional manner. His peculiarly
poetical nature here finds full scope for display, his delicacy, his
refinement, his sensitiveness to the beauties of the outside world, find
fitting channels through which to express themselves. With what a spirit
of romance Giorgione has invested his picture! So exquisitely personal
is the mood, that the subject itself has taken his biographers nearly
four centuries to decipher! For the artist, it must be noted, does not
attempt to illustrate a passage of an ancient writer; very probably,
nay, almost certainly, he had never read the _Thebaid_ of Statius,
whence comes the story of Adrastus and Hypsipyle; the subject would have
been suggested to him by some friend, a student of the Classics, and
Giorgione thereupon dressed the old Greek myth in Venetian garb, just as
Statius had done in the Latin.[16] The story is known to us only at
second hand, and we are at liberty to choose Giorgione's version in
preference to that of the Roman poet; each is an independent translation
of a common original, and certainly Giorgione's is not the less
poetical. He has created a painted lyric which is not an illustration
of, but a parallel presentation to the written poem of Statius.

Technically, the workmanship points to an earlier period than the
Castelfranco Madonna, and there is an exuberance of fancy which points
to a youthful origin. The figures are of slight and graceful build, the
composition easy and unstudied, with a tendency to adopt a triangular
arrangement in the grouping, the apex being formed by the storm scene,