The altar work “The Madonna on the throne with Saint Francis and the Holy Liberal of Treviso” or “The Madonna and Castelfranco” was written by the Venetian painter Giorgione around the period from 1503 to 1505. The size of the picture is 200 x 152 cm, wood, oil; the customer of the work is the condottier Tuzio Costanzo. Actually, the wonderful composition of the painting “Madonna and Castelfranco” completes the initial period of creativity Giorgione.
In his early works and early works of the mature period, Giorgione is directly connected with that monumental heroic line, which along with the genre-narrative passed through all the art of quattrocento and the achievements of which were primarily based on the masters of the general monumental style of the High Renaissance. The Venetian Carlo Ridolfi, who visited the artist’s hometown in 1640, wrote in his Notes: “Giorgione wrote for Tuzio Costanzo, condottiere of mercenaries, the image of Madonna and Child Christ for the parish church in Castelfranco.
To the left he placed St. George, in which he portrayed himself, and to the right – Saint Francis, in which he captured the features of one of his brothers, and gave some things in a natural manner, showing the valor of the knight and the compassion of the blessed saint. “
In the painting by Giorgione “The Madonna of Castelfranco” the figures are arranged according to the traditional composition scheme adopted for this theme by a number of masters of the Northern Italian Renaissance. Mary sits on a high pedestal; To the right and left of it are St. Francis and the local saint of the town of Castelfranco Liberale. Each figure, occupying a certain place in a strictly constructed and monumental, clearly readable composition, is nevertheless closed in itself.
The picture of this period of creativity of the Venetian artist Giorgione is iconographically traditional, but is distinguished by the spatial freedom of its landscape spaces. The composition as a whole is somewhat solemnly immobile. And at the same time, the laid-back arrangement of figures in the spacious composition, the soft spirituality of their quiet movements, the poetic character of the image of the Virgin herself create in the picture that atmosphere of a somewhat mysterious brooding dreaminess that is so characteristic of the art of the mature Giorgione avoiding the embodiment of sharp dramatic collisions.
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