The “Tempest” paper identifies the subject of Giorgione’s “La Tempesta” as “The Rest on the Flight into Egypt.” This interpretation identifies all the major elements in the painting. The nude woman nursing an infant is the Madonna. The man standing at the left functioning as an “interlocutor” is St. Joseph with his staff. The broken columns are commonplace in depictions of the “Rest on the Flight into Egypt.” The city in the background is Judea from where the Holy Family has fled but could also be equated with Padua during the Cambrai war. The scraggly plant in the foreground is identified as a “belladonna” a plant associated with witchcraft and the Devil. No other interpretation of this painting has even attempted to identify the plant.

Seeing the “Tempest” as a “sacred” subject has led to other discoveries also discussed on this site. These include interpretations of Giorgione’s “Three Ages of Man” as the “Encounter of Jesus with the Rich Young Man,” and Titian’s “Sacred and Profane Love” as “The Conversion of Mary Magdalen.”

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